Oskar Gröning, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
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German SS accountant at Auschwitz concentration camp who spoke out against Holocaust denial
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Nienburg/Weser, Lower Saxony, Germany
About Oskar Gröning
- Oskar Gröning (10 June 1921 – 9 March 2018) was a German SS Unterscharführer who was stationed at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
- His responsibilities included counting and sorting the money taken from prisoners, and he was in charge of the personal property of arriving prisoners.
- On a few occasions he witnessed the procedures of mass killing in the camp.
- After being transferred from Auschwitz to a combat unit in October 1944, Gröning surrendered to the British at the end of the war; his role in the SS was not discovered.
- He was eventually transferred to Britain as a prisoner of war and worked as a farm labourer. Upon his return to Germany, he led a normal life, reluctant to talk about his time in Auschwitz.
- However, more than 40 years later, he decided to make his activities at Auschwitz public after learning about Holocaust denial.
- He openly criticised those who denied the events that he had witnessed and the ideology to which he had subscribed.
- Gröning was notable as a German willing to make public statements about his experience as an SS soldier, which were self-incriminating and which exposed his life to public scrutiny.
- In particular, he confessed to stealing jewellery and currencies from gas chamber victims for his personal benefit.
- In September 2014, Gröning was charged by German prosecutors as an accessory to murder in 300,000 cases, for his role at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
- His trial began in April 2015, after the court had ruled that, at the age of 93, he was still fit to stand trial.
- The trial was held in Lüneburg, Germany.
- On 15 July 2015, he was found guilty of facilitating mass murder and sentenced to four years' imprisonment.
- Following a number of unsuccessful appeals against the prison sentence, Gröning died on 9 March 2018 while hospitalized before he was set to begin his sentence.
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