Uncensored Thoughts

The Accountant of Auschwitz

Watched the documentary on Netflix the other day about a guy who was known as the bookkeeper of Auschwitz. The story followed the court case of a 94-year old Nazi's court case. The entire hour and change it played, I was pissed off. By no means am I a Nazi-sympathizer. I can't even wrap my mind around how anyone can justify the murder of that many people. I go so far as to (not as radical as some people think) support the creation of Israel as a safe heaven where Jews could live without fear of persecution. I absolutely think people involved in the concentration camps deserve punishment, but I don't think how they went about it in the court case was justice.

Oskar Gröning outed himself as a Nazi doing interviews once he heard people were claiming the Holocaust didn't happen. He had no reason to come out of hiding, but he did because he wanted to make sure people were forced to accept it happened and was wrong. This is my first issue with the entire case. If he hadn't outed himself, they would have never found him to prosecute him.

My next issue is with the fact that as an old man, he is nowhere near the same person he was 70 years ago in WWII. If he showed no remorse, I could understand claiming he hadn't changed, but he declared himself morally guilty before the entire court.

Another problem I have with the case is that the witnesses they brought forward were survivors from Auschwitz who had no contact with him. Oskar wasn't in charge of sorting people for slave labor or execution. He wasn't patrolling the workers and shooting people who weren't working hard enough. While he is guilty of crimes, they aren't the murder charges he was accused and charged with. He was responsible for sorting Jewish luggage and removing valuables from them for the war effort. He never did anything but possibly pillage the victim's luggage- even though there is no direct proof he did.

If the court had the chance to retry every Nazi case with the current lack of corruption, he would his trial, if it even got taken to court, would have been small and done with very fast because he was not the issue in the camps. If you removed him from the equation, the same number of Jews would have died whereas if you changed the commander of the camp, more or less Jews could have died. In the overall scheme of life and death, Oskar didn't matter, but he was brought up on charges of being an accessory to over 300,000 murders.

At his ripe age, the courts declared him guilty and sentenced him to 4 years in jail. In my opinion, that's not justice. He can do nothing to help the Jewish community there and sending a grandpa to jail for his last few years is nothing but revenge. He ended up appealing his case for 2 years before dying without having served a single day in jail.

I think he should have been sentenced to community service at a holocaust memorial or museum. He should have had to talk about the atrocities that he was a part of and talk about how he was wrong (I think this would have been appropriate for him because I believe he was repentant). Due to his case, other Nazi's were tried (the youngest being 92). I think they should have all had to work to better Holocaust memorials. If they weren't repentant, then they could clean exhibits after hours under the watch of someone else.  Sending someone to jail at the end of their lives serves no purpose and can embolden the Neo-Nazi sickos in prison. I think they should have to do something productive with their last few years to give back to a race and religion they took so much from. That's just my opinion though.