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.

After the war, Gröning pursued a career in accounting. He openly admitted observing mass murder, but he felt no responsibility for what took place.

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