Nuremberg Remembered Biography: Oskar Gröning
Oskar Gröning was
involved in the bureaucracy of Auschwitz. He administered the
prisoners' money and valuables. He worked at the camp for more than two
years.
Gröning was 21 years old when he was
posted at Auschwitz. He arrived just after thousands of French children
had been transported to Auschwitz and witnessed what happened to these
children and other early transports. Part of his job was to supervise
the luggage of incoming transports.
Gröning was outraged at what he witnessed and requested a transfer. The transfer was rejected and he stayed at his post.
When he was asked how he felt about the
murder of children, he said that they were not the enemy as children
but that they had enemy blood in them and would be dangerous as adults.
Gröning's upbringing prepared him for his
position at Auschwitz. He grew up in a proud German family from Lower
Saxony, and his father belonged to far right nationalist organizations
in the 1920s. Oskar was 11 years old in 1933 when Adolf Hitler became
chancellor, and his parents thoroughly embraced Nazi ideology. After
graduating high school, Oskar interned in banking. He and other interns
at the bank joined the German army; he joined the elite Waffen SS. Before being assigned to Auschwitz, he did bookkeeping in Berlin.
When he first arrived at Auschwitz, he
was not aware of its function as a death camp and felt justified in
removing Jewish property. When he finally learned of the function of
Auschwitz, he explained:
-
You cannot imagine it really. I
could only accept it fully when I was guarding the valuables and the
suitcases at the selection. If you ask me about it-it was a shock, that
you cannot take in at the first moment. But you mustn't forget that not
only from 1933 [Hitler's acquisition of power], but even from before
that, the propaganda I got as a boy in the press, the media, the
general society I lived in made us aware that the Jews were the cause
of the first world war, and had also "stabbed Germany in the back" at
the end. And that the Jews were actually the cause of the misery in
which Germany found herself. We were convinced by our worldview that
there was a great conspiracy of Jewishness against us, and that thought
was expressed in Auschwitz-that it must be avoided, namely, that the
Jews put us in misery. The enemies who are within Germany are being
killed-exterminated if necessary. And between these two fights, openly
at the front line and then on the home front, there's absolutely no
difference-so we exterminated nothing but enemies.
-
-Oskar Gröning, quoted in Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: A New History (2005), 132-33.
Excerpts of transcript
