Former SS officer Oskar Groening has told a German court that he helped keep watch as thousands of Jews were led from cattle cars directly to the gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp where he served as a guard.
The 93-year-old, charged with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder, said as his trial opened on Tuesday that he witnessed individual atrocities, but did not acknowledge participating in any crimes.
He recalled how a fellow guard discovered a baby abandoned among luggage and bashed it against a truck to stop its crying. After that, he unsuccessfully requested a transfer and started to drink vodka heavily to cope with working at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, he said.
"I share morally in the guilt but whether I am guilty under criminal law, you will have to decide," Groening told judges hearing the case at the Lueneburg state court in northern Germany. Under the German legal system, defendants do not enter formal pleas.
Groening testified in a lengthy statement to the court that he volunteered to join the SS in 1940 after working briefly at a bank, and served at Auschwitz from 1942 to 1944.
Aside from helping on the ramp as transports of Jews arrived, Groening said his main task was to help collect and tally money as part of his job dealing with the belongings stolen from people arriving at Auschwitz.
Groening said the money was regularly sent back to Berlin. Pressed by presiding Judge Franz Kompisch, he said his view was that it belonged to the state.
"They didn't need it anymore," he said of the Jews from whom the money was taken - drawing gasps from Auschwitz survivors watching.
The charges against Groening relate to a period in May and June 1944 when some 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought to Auschwitz and at least 300,000 almost immediately gassed to death.
Groening could face a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison if convicted.
There are currently 11 open investigations against former Auschwitz guards, and charges have been filed in three of those cases, including Groening's. Eight former Majdanek guards are also under investigation.
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