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Former Auschwitz Nazi guard on trial in Germany over Holocaust murders

By Andrew V. Pestano

LüNEBURG, Germany, April 21 (UPI) -- Oskar Groening, a 93-year-old former Nazi SS guard known as the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz," is on trial in Germany on complicity charges over the murder of at least 300,000 Jews in 1944.

He admitted to his role in counting money taken from Auschwitz concentration camp arrivals and said he witnessed mass killings, but denied direct participation in genocide.

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"It is beyond question that I am morally complicit. This moral guilt I acknowledge here, before the victims, with regret and humility," Groening said soon after the start of the trial. "As concerns guilt before the law," he addressed the judges, "you must decide."

Groening described one event where he witnessed prisoners escorted into a gas chamber, whose screams "grew louder and more desperate, and after a short time became quieter and then stopped completely."

"That was the only time I saw a complete gassing," Groening said. "I did not take part." He served as an Schutzstaffel, or SS, Nazi guard at the concentration camp from 1942 to 1944.

Four holocaust survivors were in the courtroom as Groening spoke for nearly an hour. He could be sentenced to serve between three to 15 years imprisonment if found guilty.

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More than six million Jews are estimated to have been killed during the Holocaust by Nazi Germany.

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