April trial date for Auschwitz guard Groening

LUENEBURG , Germany, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- A former Nazi guard at the Auschwitz death camp will be tried in April on at least 300,000 counts of accessory to murder, a Lueneburg, Germany, court announced.

The trial of Oskar Groening, 93, known as "the bookkeeper of Auschwitz," whose responsibilities allegedly included counting money in the pockets of over 425,000 people sent to the Nazi camp in Poland in 1944, involves 55 plaintiffs, many of whom are expected to attend the trial. It is expected to begin Apr. 21.

When he was charged in September, Hanover, Germany, prosecutors said Groening was aware the arriving prisoners, predominately Jews, considered unfit for work, "were murdered directly after their arrival in the gas chambers." Federal investigators recommended his prosecution, and that of about 30 other former Auschwitz guards, in 2013.

"I was ashamed for decades and I still am today," he told the German magazine Bild in 2005. Not of my acts, because I never killed anyone, but I offered my aid. I was a cog in the killing machine that eliminated millions of people."

Groening's case is likely to be among the last of its kind, although prosecutors in Hamburg, Germany, have begun an investigation of Hilda Michnia, 93, a Hamburg resident who allegedly worked as a Nazi guard at the Bergen-Belsen death camp in Germany. She allegedly was involved in a forced march of prisoners, which killed about 1,400 of them, as Allied troops arrived at the camp. She has denied the allegations.