A request for clemency was denied Wednesday (Jan. 14, 2018) for 96-year-old Oskar Groening, a former Nazi guard at the Auschwitz concentration and death camp during the Nazi Holocaust in World War II.
The appeal, based on a claim that Groening was too unhealthy and old to serve out his sentence, was denied by German prosecutors at a court in Lueneberg.
The decision was handed down the day after the request was submitted, according to Wiebke Bethke, spokesperson for the prosecutors’ office in Lueneberg.
Groening was convicted of being an accessory to the murders of 300,000 prisoners at Auschwitz during the war. He was known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz,” and confessed to having been assigned to gathering the money and valuables from the baggage of the Jews who were imprisoned there, and handing over what he found to his superiors, who were required to transfer the loot to Berlin.
Groening said in 2015 that he would not ask forgiveness from survivors or victims’ families. “I can only ask my God for forgiveness,” he said through his attorney during the trial.
Another appeal may be filed with the Hannover Ministry of Justice, according to a report by UPI.
Nevertheless, the former Nazi guard is expected to be sent to prison by the end of this month and if further appeals are denied he will have no choice but to serve his entire four-year sentence.
Six million Jews died in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II, including some 1.1 million who were believed to have been murdered at Auschwitz.