The Nazi's testimony

Oskar Gröning was at his local philately club when a fellow stamp collector cast doubts on the Holocaust. Gröning knew he was wrong - because 50 years earlier he had served at Auschwitz. Laurence Rees on what happened when the ex-SS soldier decided to finally confront his past

After the war, Oskar Gröning took up a hobby. He worked as a manager in a glass factory near Hamburg, but in his own time he became a keen stamp collector. It was at a meeting of his local philately club, in the late 1980s, that Gröning found himself chatting to a man about politics.

"Isn't it terrible," said the man, "that the government says it's illegal to say anything against the killing of millions of Jews in Auschwitz?" He went on to explain to Gröning how it was "inconceivable" for so many bodies to have been burned.

Gröning said nothing to contradict these statements. But the attempt to deny the reality of Auschwitz, the site of the largest mass murder in history, upset him and made him angry. He obtained one of the Holocaust deniers' pamphlets that his fellow stamp collector had recommended, wrote an ironic commentary on it, and posted it to the man from the philately club.

Suddenly, he started to get phone calls from strangers who disputed his view. It turned out that his denunciation of the Holocaust deniers' case had been printed in a neo-Nazi magazine. The calls and letters he received "were all from people who tried to prove that Auschwitz was a huge mistake, a big hallucination, because it hadn't happened".

But Gröning knew very well it had happened - for he was posted to Auschwitz in September 1942, as a 22-year-old member of the SS. Almost immediately he witnessed the arrival of Jews at the camp. "I was standing at the ramp," he says, "and my task was to be part of the group supervising the luggage from an incoming transport." He watched while SS doctors first separated men from women and children, and then selected who was fit to work and who would be gassed immediately. "Sick people were lifted on to lorries. Red Cross lorries - they [the SS] always tried to create the impression that people had nothing to fear." Gröning estimates that 80-90% of those on the first transport he witnessed were selected to be murdered at once.

Later, he witnessed the burning of bodies: "This comrade said, 'Come with me, I'll show you.' I was so shocked that I stood at a distance. The fire was flickering up and the kapo [a prisoner in charge of work details] there told me afterwards details of the burning. And it was terribly disgusting - horrendous. He made fun of the fact that when the bodies started burning they obviously developed gases from the lungs and these bodies seemed to jump up, and the sex parts of the men suddenly became erect in a way that he found laughable."

Gröning was upset by the sights he had seen and went to his boss, an SS lieutenant, and put in a request for a transfer to a front-line unit. "He listened to me and said: 'My dear Gröning, what do you want to do against it? We're all in the same boat. We've given an obligation to accept this - not to even think about it.'"

With the words of his superior ringing in his ears, and his transfer request turned down, Gröning returned to work. He had sworn an oath of loyalty; he believed the Jews were Germany's enemy; and he knew that he could manipulate his life at the camp to avoid encountering the worst of the horror. So he stayed.

Gröning then discovered there were "positive" aspects of working at Auschwitz: "I have to say that many who worked there weren't dull, they were intelligent." When he eventually left the camp, he went with some regrets. "I'd left a circle of friends who I'd got familiar with, I'd got fond of, and that was very difficult. Apart from the fact that there are pigs who fulfil their personal drives - there are such people - the special situation at Auschwitz led to friendships which, I still say today, I think back on with joy."

To meet Gröning today, and listen to his attempt to explain his time at Auschwitz, is a strange experience. In appearance, he is indistinguishable from countless other elderly, prosperous Germans. He wears good clothes, eats solid German food and espouses conventional right-of-centre political views. Now in his 80s, he talks almost as if there was another Oskar Gröning who worked at Auschwitz 60 years ago - he can be surprisingly critical of his younger self. The essential, almost frightening, point about him is that he is one of the least exceptional human beings you are ever likely to meet. He is no insane SS monster, but a former bank clerk who happened, because of his own choices and historical circumstance, to find himself working in one of the most infamous places in history.

Gröning joined the Hitler Youth when the Nazis came to power in 1933. He took part in the burning of books written by Jews and "degenerates". He believed he was helping rid Germany of alien cultures. At 17, he began a traineeship as a bank clerk. Just months later war was declared. Gröning wanted to join an "elite" unit of the German army so went to a hotel where the Waffen SS was recruiting and joined up.

After a couple of years of clerical work for the SS, he was posted to Auschwitz. On arrival, Gröning was quizzed by senior officers about his background before the war. "We had to say what we'd been doing, what kind of job, what level of education," he recalls. "I said that I was a bank clerk and that I wanted to work in administration and one of the officers said, 'Oh, I can use someone like that.'"

As Gröning began his task of counting the prisoners' money, he was told that valuables taken from Jews would not be returned. When he asked why, his colleagues replied: "Well, don't you know? That's the way it is here. Jewish transports arrive, and as far as they're not able to work, they're got rid of." Until that moment, Gröning had thought Auschwitz functioned as a "normal" concentration camp.

"It was a shock that you cannot take in at the first moment," he says. But once he had been at Auschwitz for several months, the work, he says, had become "routine". "The propaganda had for us such an effect that you assumed that to exterminate them was basically something that happened in war. And, to that extent, a feeling of sympathy or empathy didn't come up."

Gröning's job was to sort the various currencies taken from the new arrivals and send it to Berlin. In his office, he was insulated from the brutality. The only reminder that different nationalities were coming to the camp was the variety of currencies that crossed Gröning's desk - and the array of alcohol taken from the new arrivals. "When there was a lot of ouzo," he says, "it could only come from Greece - otherwise there was no reason for us to distinguish where they came from. We drank a lot of vodka. We didn't get drunk every day - but it did happen. We'd go to bed drunk, and if someone was too lazy to turn off the light they'd shoot at it - nobody said anything."

In 1944, Gröning's application for a transfer to the front line was finally granted and he joined an SS unit in the Ardennes. He was wounded in fighting before he and his comrades eventually gave themselves up to the British in June 1945. They were handed a questionnaire and Gröning realised that "involvement in the concentration camp of Auschwitz would have a negative response", so he put down that he had worked for the SS economic and administration office in Berlin.

"The victor's always right, and we knew that the things that happened there [in Auschwitz] did not always comply with human rights," he observes, seemingly oblivious to how such understatement might seem grotesque.

Along with his SS comrades, Gröning was imprisoned in a former Nazi concentration camp: "It was not very pleasant - that was revenge against the guilty." But life improved when he was shipped to England in 1946 where, as a forced labourer, he had "a very comfortable life". He went back to Germany in 1948.

Shortly after his return, he was sitting at the dinner table with his parents-in-law and "they made a silly remark about Auschwitz", implying that he was a "potential or real murderer". "I exploded!" says Gröning. "I banged my fist on the table and said, 'This word and this connection are never, ever, to be mentioned again in my presence, otherwise I'll move out!' I was quite loud, and this was respected and it was never mentioned again."

Thus did the Gröning family settle down to its postwar future, enjoying the fruits of the German "economic miracle". Gröning rose through the management at the glass factory, becoming head of personnel. Before retirement, he was appointed an honorary judge of industrial tribunal cases. Even today, he believes that the experience he gained in the SS and Hitler Youth helped his career. "From the age of 12 onwards I learnt about discipline," he says.

When his past was eventually uncovered (he never made any attempt to change his name or hide), the German prosecutors did not press charges against him. This was, in fact, typical. Gröning's experience illustrates how it is possible to have been a member of the SS, worked at Auschwitz, witnessed the extermination process, contributed to the Final Solution, and still not be thought "guilty" by the postwar West German state. Of the 6,500 members of the SS who worked at Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945 and are thought to have survived the war, only about 750 were prosecuted, the vast majority by the Poles.

Throughout his life, Gröning believes he did what he thought was right; it's just that what was "right" then, he says, turns out not to be "right" today. It was not until his philatelic encounter with the Holocaust deniers that he decided to speak openly about his time at the death camp. Once he had retired and knew he would not be prosecuted by the German authorities, he decided he had nothing to lose by confronting his past. Decades after his time at Auschwitz, Gröning finally broke rank.

"I would like you to believe me," he says. "I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematorium. I saw the open fires. I was on the ramp when the selections took place. I would like you to believe that these atrocities happened, because I was there."

· The first programme in the series Auschwitz: the Nazis and the Final Solution, written and produced by Laurence Rees, will be shown on BBC 2 tomorrow at 9pm. The accompanying book, also by Rees, is published by BBC Books at £20. To order a copy for £18.40 with free UK p&p, call the Guardian Book Service on 0870 836 0875, or go to www.guardian.co.uk/bookshop

The horror is that those we consider educated, normal human beings can become accustomed to, accepting of, approving of mass atrocities..We may not like his rationalizing his past, but his story is important for the deniers..He was not a prisoner but SS.

We always need to remember lest we ourselves repeat such atrocities.. while rationalizing it away as "necessary".

The same conspiracy theorists who claim that The Holocaust was a giant hoax, will now claim that the Jews have paid this guy to step forward and tell lies. Some people will do or say anything to make the world as they want it to be. Anything which doesn't conform to their view of the world is rigged.

I hope Gröning's interview is shown on American T.V. and I hope someone helps him write a book on his experiences - and soon!

This might be a little peripheral, but I have noticed quite a few stories lately about archaelogical excavations which indicate that early cultures were not composed of "sub-humans", but of modern humans with all the brain capacity and social/cultural aspects that we have, albeit in times of less complete scientific knowledge.

The articles always make the link that those cultures and societies are as well-developed as our own for the times - they were just like us.

The corollary, of course, is that we are just like them. The barbarism that often is characterized as being symptomatic of "olden times" is alive and well. Nothing illustrates this better than the Nazis.

Its sad that the Nazi's weren't the only example, or even the last example in recent history of "modern" humans descending into barbarism. Although sadly, like in many other things, we're a lot more efficient at it now than we used to be.

>>>National Socialist Students' Union????

So this is SDS??? Or the Weathman???

Students for a Democratic Society and the Weatherman Underground Association
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1265828/posts

Hitler Youth Resource Page
Guide picks
Shortly after Hitler's rise to power in 1933, all German youth groups were merged into a single, regimented organization called Hitlerjugend, the Hitler Youth. Following the dictator's view that the youth of Germany would preserve the thousand year Reich, all children were heavily immersed in Nazi dogma from the age of 10.

Artur Axmann
Provides concise information on Artur Axmann, leader of the Hitler Youth.

Baldur von Schirach
In 1926 Schirach met Adolf Hitler who took a liking to him and advised him to move to Munich. Three years later Hitler appointed Schirach as head of the National Socialist Students' Union. Satisfied with his work Hitler promoted him to the post of Reich youth leader of the Nazi Party and in 1933 he took over the leadership of the Hitler Youth.

I think the Hitler Youth were like the Boy Scouts or something.

This man has some real courage, apparently born from years of experience that he unfortunately could not delve at his earlier age.

Youth is so gullible and easy to lead, while the older adults who have seen many years of life question and hold their opinions to themelves.

At least this man is now speaking up.

Some differences in the background stories:

Soros Bio Page
1)

Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary, on Aug. 12, 1930. His father, a Jewish attorney, provided the family and many others with false identity papers when the Germans invaded Hungary in March 1944. Unhappy with the Soviet occupation of his country after World War II, George left Hungary in 1947 and went to England, where he enrolled in the London School of Economics. There he learned about Karl Popper's theory that history is unpredictable and unfolds better in the democratic chaos of “open societies” than under totalitarian rulers who claim a monopoly on truth.

http://bear.cba.ufl.edu/karceski/FIN7447/ch%20papers/george%20soros.pdf
2)
Born in 1930 and given the name Dzjcgdhe Shorash, George Soros began life in a privileged Jewish family. His father Tividar was an attorney but worked only when he felt he really needed the extra money, which was not very frequently. To spend his time (and fortune) Tividar dabbled in real estate and published an Esperanto journal. However, this was not the life that Tividar was raised in. The good life came to Tividar only after a treacherous youth and marrying into wealth. As a lieutenant in World War I, he was taken to Siberia as a prisoner of war. He escaped, but for most of the Russian Revolution he was forced to live as a fugitive. It took some time before he was able to reenter society. The skills and instincts that Tividar learned during that time later saved his family and many others during the Nazi occupation of Hungary.

>>>As a lieutenant in World War I, he was taken to Siberia as a prisoner of war. He escaped, but for most of the Russian Revolution he was forced to live as a fugitive.

I admit. I've never been to Russia.

But, how easy is it to escape from Siberia?

Or was Dzjcgdhe Shorash aka George Soros actually a Nazi Boy Scout? Who, today funds MoveOn.org, SDS, Weathermen?

What does this part mean? Is Hitler Youth referring to some type of youth camp/groups?

Hitler youth was an organization the took German chidren and brainwashed them. The boy scouts were disbanded and all young children attended Hitler youth meetings. Attendence wasn't required but there were penalties attached for those who didin't(parents got the penalties). Most of them broke the brainwashing after the war but some hung onto it through life. This was so strong that at the end of the war in Berlin, when the fighing was fierce, the Hitler youth, ages about 14, were in the front of the battle using pazer faust to attack Ruissian and American troops. One of Hitlers most outrageous legacies: Hitler youth.

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