Oskar Gröning
Encyclopedia
Oskar Gröning (born 1921) was a German
SS
-Rottenführer
at Auschwitz concentration camp
.
He was born in Lower Saxony
. After his mother died when he was four, he received a strict upbringing from his father, a skilled textile worker. During his childhood, he joined various nationalist youth groups, including the Hitler Youth
when the Nazis came to power in 1933, convinced that Nazism was advantageous to Germany
. After school, Gröning got a job as a trainee bank clerk, but inspired by Germany's military victories in France and Poland, subsequently joined the Waffen-SS
. His role in salary administration suited his aspirations, but in 1942 the SS ordered that desk jobs should be reserved for injured veterans, and that fit members in administrative roles were to be subjected to more challenging duties.
This resulted in the culmination of Gröning's SS career: his deployment at Auschwitz. His responsibilities included counting and sorting the money stolen from exterminated prisoners, and guarding other prisoner belongings in the camp before they were plundered. While at the camp, he witnessed the entire killing process. After being transferred from Auschwitz to an active unit in 1944, Gröning was captured by the British on June 10, 1945 when his unit surrendered. After being temporarily held in a former concentration camp he was transferred to England in 1946, working as a forced labourer. He returned to Germany
to lead a relatively normal life, preferring not to discuss his association with Auschwitz. However, he decided to make it public after learning about Holocaust denial
, and has since openly criticised those who deny the events that he witnessed, and the ideology he once subscribed to.
as the son of a strict conservative and skilled textile worker. His mother died when he was four. His father, a proud nationalist, joined the Stahlhelm
after Germany's defeat in World War I
, and his anger at how Germany had been treated following the Treaty of Versailles
increased as his textile business went bankrupt in 1929 due to insufficient capital.
Gröning was fascinated by military uniforms, and one of his earliest memories is of looking at photos of his grandfather, who served in an elite regiment of the Duchy of Brunswick
, on his horse and playing his trumpet.
when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Influenced by his family's values, he felt that Nazism was advantageous to Germany and believed that the Nazis "were the people who wanted the best for Germany and who did something about it." He participated in the burning of books written by Jews and other authors that the Nazis considered degenerate in the belief that he was helping Germany free itself from an alien culture, and considered that National Socialism was having a positive effect on the economy, pointing to lower unemployment.
Gröning left school with high marks and began a traineeship as a bank clerk when he was 17, but war was declared
shortly after he started employment and eight of the twenty clerks were immediately conscripted into the army. This allowed the remaining trainees to further their banking careers in a relatively short amount of time, however despite these opportunities, Gröning and his colleagues were inspired by Germany's quick victories in France and Poland and wanted to contribute.
. To his father's obliviousness, he did so at a hotel where the SS were recruiting. Gröning says his father was disappointed to learn this when he came home after having joined.
Gröning describes himself as a "desk person" and was content with his role in SS salary administration, which granted him both the administrative and military aspects he wanted from a career.
where they reported to one of the SS economic
offices. They were then given a lecture by several high-ranking officers who reminded them of the oath of loyalty they took, which they could prove by doing a difficult task. The task was top secret – Gröning and his comrades had to sign a declaration that they would not disclose it to family or friends, or people not in their unit. Once this had concluded, they were split into smaller groups and taken to various Berlin stations where they boarded a train in the direction of Katowice
with orders to report to the commandant of Auschwitz
, a place which Gröning had not heard of before.
After arriving at the main camp, they were allocated provisional bunks in the SS barracks and were warmly greeted by fellow SS men who got them something to eat. Gröning was surprised at the myriad of food items available in addition to basic SS rations, and his group were curious to know what sort of place Auschwitz was. However, they were told that they should find out for themselves because Auschwitz was a special kind of concentration camp, immediately after which, someone opened the door and shouted "Transport!", causing 3 or 4 people to leave the room.
The next day, Gröning and the other arrivals reported to the central SS administrative building, where they were asked about their background before the war. One of the officers said Gröning's bank clerk skills would be useful, and took him to barracks where the prisoners' money was kept. Gröning said he was told that when prisoners were registered into the camp, their money was stored here and it was returned to them when they left.
However, it became clear that Auschwitz was not merely a normal internment camp with above average SS rations, but one that served an additional function. Gröning was informed that money taken from Jews was actually not returned to them. When he enquired further, his colleagues confirmed that the Jews were being exterminated, and this did indeed relate to the transport that arrived the previous night.
However, his bureaucratic job did not shield him completely from physical acts of the extermination process: as early as his first day, Gröning saw children hidden on the train, and those unable to walk that remained among the rubbish and debris after the selection process had been completed, being shot. Gröning also heard:
After witnessing this, Gröning went to his boss and told him that he wasn't able to work at Auschwitz any more, stating that if the extermination of the Jews is necessary, "then at least it should be done within a certain framework". The superior officer denied Gröning's request.
One night towards the end of 1942, Gröning and his comrades in their barracks in the SS camp on the outskirts of Birkenau were awoken by an alarm. They were told that a number of Jews who were being taken to the gas chambers had escaped and hidden in the woods, and so were ordered to take pistols and search the woods. When his group arrived at the extermination area of the camp they saw a farmhouse, in front of which were SS men and the bodies of seven or eight prisoners who had been caught and shot. The SS men told Gröning and his comrades that they could go home but they decided not to, choosing instead to hang around in the shadows of the woods.
They then watched as an SS man put on a gas mask and emptied a tin of Zyklon B
into a hatch in the cottage wall. Gröning said the humming noise from inside "turned to screaming" for a minute, then to silence. A comrade later showed him the bodies being burnt in a pit, where a Kapo there told him details of the burning, such as how gases developed in the body, seemed to make the burning corpses move.
The relative tranquility that Gröning's job gave him was once again broken, and he once again complained to his boss. His boss, an SS-Untersturmführer
, listened to him, but reminded him of the pledge that he and his comrades made to accept it, and so he returned to work, mindful of the fact that he could manipulate his life at Auschwitz so that he would avoid witnessing the camp's most unpalatable aspects.
. He was wounded and sent to a field hospital before rejoining his unit, which eventually surrendered to the British on June 10, 1945.
He realized that declaring "involvement in the concentration camp of Auschwitz would have a negative response," and so tried not to draw attention to it, putting on the form given to him by the British that he worked for the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt instead. He did this because "the victor's always right", and that things happened at Auschwitz which "did not always comply with human rights".
Gröning and the rest of his SS colleagues were imprisoned in an old Nazi concentration camp. He was later sent to England
as a forced labourer in 1946 where he had a "very comfortable life". He ate good food and earned money, and travelled through the Midlands
and Scotland
giving concerts for four months, singing German hymns and traditional English folk songs
to grateful British audiences.
Upon return to Germany, Gröning lived with his father's in-laws. At the dinner table, they once made "a silly remark about Auschwitz", implying that he was a "potential or real murderer", which Gröning said he exploded at, banging his fist on the table, saying: "This word and this connection are never, ever, to be mentioned again in my presence, otherwise I'll move out!" Gröning said that this request was respected.
club's annual meeting more than 40 years after the war, when he fell into a conversation about politics with the man next to him. The man told him it was "terrible" that Holocaust denial
was illegal in Germany, and went on to tell Gröning how so many bodies could not have been burnt, and that the volume of gas that was supposed to have been used would have killed all living things in the vicinity.
Gröning said nothing in response to these statements, replying only: "I know a little more about that, we should discuss it some time." The man recommended a pamphlet by Holocaust denier Thies Christophersen
. Gröning obtained a copy and mailed it to Christophersen, having written his own commentary on it, which included the words:
Gröning then began receiving phone calls and letters from strangers who tried to tell him Auschwitz was not actually a place for exterminating human beings in gas chambers.
It became apparent that his comments condemning Holocaust denial had been printed in a neo-Nazi
magazine, and that most of the anonymous calls and letters were, "From people who tried to prove that what I had seen with my own eyes, what I had experienced in Auschwitz was a big, big mistake, a big hallucination on my part because it hadn't happened."
As a result of such comments, Gröning decided to speak openly about his experiences, and publicly denounce people who maintain the events he witnessed never happened. He says his message to Holocaust deniers is:
He also wrote memoirs for his family, consisting of 87 pages.
Although Gröning requested to leave Auschwitz after he witnessed the killing, Laurence Rees
writes that this was only on the basis of its practical implementation, and that the principle of Jews being exterminated itself was not something that Gröning objected to. Indeed he thought it was justified due to all the Nazi propaganda he had been subjected to, in that Germany's enemies were being destroyed, which to him made the tools of their destruction (such as gas chambers) of no particular significance. Because of this, he says his feelings about seeing people and knowing that they had hours to live before being gassed were "very ambiguous". He explains that children were murdered because, while the children themselves were not the enemy, the danger was the blood within them, in that they could grow up to become dangerous Jews. Rees points to Gröning's ultra-nationalist upbringing as indication of how he was able to justify the extermination of helpless women and children. Gröning says that the horrors in the gas chambers did eventually dawn on him when he heard the screams.
Rees writes that Gröning describes his time at Auschwitz as if he were talking about another Oskar Gröning at Auschwitz—and as a result, the post-war Gröning speaks more candidly about his time there by segregating the Gröning that contributed to the running of a death camp from the modern Gröning that condemns Nazi ideology.
Gröning says that the screams of those in the gas chambers have never left him, and has never returned to Auschwitz because of his shame. He says he feels guilt towards the Jewish people, and for being part of the organisation that committed crimes against them, despite "not having been one of the perpetrators myself". He asks for God's forgiveness and forgiveness from the Jewish people.
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
-Rottenführer
Rottenführer
Rottenführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was first created in the year 1932. The rank of Rottenführer was used by several Nazi paramilitary groups, among them the Sturmabteilung , the Schutzstaffel and was senior to the paramilitary rank of Sturmmann.The insignia for Rottenführer...
at Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
.
He was born in Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony is a German state situated in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen states of Germany...
. After his mother died when he was four, he received a strict upbringing from his father, a skilled textile worker. During his childhood, he joined various nationalist youth groups, including the Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
when the Nazis came to power in 1933, convinced that Nazism was advantageous to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. After school, Gröning got a job as a trainee bank clerk, but inspired by Germany's military victories in France and Poland, subsequently joined the Waffen-SS
Waffen-SS
The Waffen-SS was a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of the Third Reich. It constituted the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel or SS, an organ of the Nazi Party. The Waffen-SS saw action throughout World War II and grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions, and served alongside...
. His role in salary administration suited his aspirations, but in 1942 the SS ordered that desk jobs should be reserved for injured veterans, and that fit members in administrative roles were to be subjected to more challenging duties.
This resulted in the culmination of Gröning's SS career: his deployment at Auschwitz. His responsibilities included counting and sorting the money stolen from exterminated prisoners, and guarding other prisoner belongings in the camp before they were plundered. While at the camp, he witnessed the entire killing process. After being transferred from Auschwitz to an active unit in 1944, Gröning was captured by the British on June 10, 1945 when his unit surrendered. After being temporarily held in a former concentration camp he was transferred to England in 1946, working as a forced labourer. He returned to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
to lead a relatively normal life, preferring not to discuss his association with Auschwitz. However, he decided to make it public after learning about Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
, and has since openly criticised those who deny the events that he witnessed, and the ideology he once subscribed to.
Early life
Gröning was born in Lower SaxonyLower Saxony
Lower Saxony is a German state situated in north-western Germany and is second in area and fourth in population among the sixteen states of Germany...
as the son of a strict conservative and skilled textile worker. His mother died when he was four. His father, a proud nationalist, joined the Stahlhelm
Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten
The Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten also known in short form as Der Stahlhelm was one of the many paramilitary organizations that arose after the defeat of World War I in the Weimar Republic...
after Germany's defeat in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, and his anger at how Germany had been treated following the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
increased as his textile business went bankrupt in 1929 due to insufficient capital.
Gröning was fascinated by military uniforms, and one of his earliest memories is of looking at photos of his grandfather, who served in an elite regiment of the Duchy of Brunswick
Duchy of Brunswick
Brunswick was a historical state in Germany. Originally the territory of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in the Holy Roman Empire, it was established as an independent duchy by the Congress of Vienna in 1815...
, on his horse and playing his trumpet.
Childhood
Gröning states that his childhood was one of "discipline, obedience" and "authority". He joined the Scharnhorst, the Stahlhelm's youth organization as a small boy in the 1930s, and later the Hitler YouthHitler Youth
The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...
when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Influenced by his family's values, he felt that Nazism was advantageous to Germany and believed that the Nazis "were the people who wanted the best for Germany and who did something about it." He participated in the burning of books written by Jews and other authors that the Nazis considered degenerate in the belief that he was helping Germany free itself from an alien culture, and considered that National Socialism was having a positive effect on the economy, pointing to lower unemployment.
Gröning left school with high marks and began a traineeship as a bank clerk when he was 17, but war was declared
Invasion of Poland (1939)
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II in Europe...
shortly after he started employment and eight of the twenty clerks were immediately conscripted into the army. This allowed the remaining trainees to further their banking careers in a relatively short amount of time, however despite these opportunities, Gröning and his colleagues were inspired by Germany's quick victories in France and Poland and wanted to contribute.
SS career
Gröning wanted to join an elite army unit and set his sights on joining the Waffen-SSWaffen-SS
The Waffen-SS was a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of the Third Reich. It constituted the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel or SS, an organ of the Nazi Party. The Waffen-SS saw action throughout World War II and grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions, and served alongside...
. To his father's obliviousness, he did so at a hotel where the SS were recruiting. Gröning says his father was disappointed to learn this when he came home after having joined.
Gröning describes himself as a "desk person" and was content with his role in SS salary administration, which granted him both the administrative and military aspects he wanted from a career.
Arrival
Gröning worked as a bookkeeper for a year until 1942, when the SS ordered that desk jobs would be reserved for injured veterans, and that fit members in administrative roles were to be subjected to more challenging duties. Gröning and about 22 of his colleagues travelled to BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
where they reported to one of the SS economic
SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt
The SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt was responsible for managing the finances, supply systems and business projects for the Allgemeine-SS...
offices. They were then given a lecture by several high-ranking officers who reminded them of the oath of loyalty they took, which they could prove by doing a difficult task. The task was top secret – Gröning and his comrades had to sign a declaration that they would not disclose it to family or friends, or people not in their unit. Once this had concluded, they were split into smaller groups and taken to various Berlin stations where they boarded a train in the direction of Katowice
Katowice
Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Kłodnica and Rawa rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about north of the Silesian Beskids and about southeast of the Sudetes Mountains.It is the central district of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, with a population of 2...
with orders to report to the commandant of Auschwitz
Rudolf Höß
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was an SS-Obersturmbannführer , and from 4 May 1940 to November 1943, the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, where it is estimated that more than a million people were murdered...
, a place which Gröning had not heard of before.
After arriving at the main camp, they were allocated provisional bunks in the SS barracks and were warmly greeted by fellow SS men who got them something to eat. Gröning was surprised at the myriad of food items available in addition to basic SS rations, and his group were curious to know what sort of place Auschwitz was. However, they were told that they should find out for themselves because Auschwitz was a special kind of concentration camp, immediately after which, someone opened the door and shouted "Transport!", causing 3 or 4 people to leave the room.
The next day, Gröning and the other arrivals reported to the central SS administrative building, where they were asked about their background before the war. One of the officers said Gröning's bank clerk skills would be useful, and took him to barracks where the prisoners' money was kept. Gröning said he was told that when prisoners were registered into the camp, their money was stored here and it was returned to them when they left.
However, it became clear that Auschwitz was not merely a normal internment camp with above average SS rations, but one that served an additional function. Gröning was informed that money taken from Jews was actually not returned to them. When he enquired further, his colleagues confirmed that the Jews were being exterminated, and this did indeed relate to the transport that arrived the previous night.
Tasks
Gröning's responsibilities included sorting and counting the multitude of currencies taken from arriving deportees and sending it to Berlin, and attending the selection process – not to decide who was to be killed but to guard the belongings of arrivals until they were sorted. He said he was astonished to learn of the extermination process, but later accepted his part in it, stating that his work became "routine" after several months.However, his bureaucratic job did not shield him completely from physical acts of the extermination process: as early as his first day, Gröning saw children hidden on the train, and those unable to walk that remained among the rubbish and debris after the selection process had been completed, being shot. Gröning also heard:
After witnessing this, Gröning went to his boss and told him that he wasn't able to work at Auschwitz any more, stating that if the extermination of the Jews is necessary, "then at least it should be done within a certain framework". The superior officer denied Gröning's request.
One night towards the end of 1942, Gröning and his comrades in their barracks in the SS camp on the outskirts of Birkenau were awoken by an alarm. They were told that a number of Jews who were being taken to the gas chambers had escaped and hidden in the woods, and so were ordered to take pistols and search the woods. When his group arrived at the extermination area of the camp they saw a farmhouse, in front of which were SS men and the bodies of seven or eight prisoners who had been caught and shot. The SS men told Gröning and his comrades that they could go home but they decided not to, choosing instead to hang around in the shadows of the woods.
They then watched as an SS man put on a gas mask and emptied a tin of Zyklon B
Zyklon B
Zyklon B was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide infamous for its use by Nazi Germany to kill human beings in gas chambers of extermination camps during the Holocaust. The "B" designation indicates one of two types of Zyklon...
into a hatch in the cottage wall. Gröning said the humming noise from inside "turned to screaming" for a minute, then to silence. A comrade later showed him the bodies being burnt in a pit, where a Kapo there told him details of the burning, such as how gases developed in the body, seemed to make the burning corpses move.
The relative tranquility that Gröning's job gave him was once again broken, and he once again complained to his boss. His boss, an SS-Untersturmführer
Untersturmführer
Untersturmführer was a paramilitary rank of the German Schutzstaffel first created in July 1934. The rank can trace its origins to the older SA rank of Sturmführer which had existed since the founding of the SA in 1921...
, listened to him, but reminded him of the pledge that he and his comrades made to accept it, and so he returned to work, mindful of the fact that he could manipulate his life at Auschwitz so that he would avoid witnessing the camp's most unpalatable aspects.
England
Gröning's application to transfer to a unit on the front-line was successful, and in 1944 he joined an SS unit fighting in the ArdennesArdennes
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...
. He was wounded and sent to a field hospital before rejoining his unit, which eventually surrendered to the British on June 10, 1945.
He realized that declaring "involvement in the concentration camp of Auschwitz would have a negative response," and so tried not to draw attention to it, putting on the form given to him by the British that he worked for the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt instead. He did this because "the victor's always right", and that things happened at Auschwitz which "did not always comply with human rights".
Gröning and the rest of his SS colleagues were imprisoned in an old Nazi concentration camp. He was later sent to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
as a forced labourer in 1946 where he had a "very comfortable life". He ate good food and earned money, and travelled through the Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
and Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
giving concerts for four months, singing German hymns and traditional English folk songs
Folk music of England
Folk music of England refers to various types of traditionally based music, often contrasted with courtly, classical and later commercial music, for which evidence exists from the later medieval period. It has been preserved and transmitted orally, through print and later through recordings...
to grateful British audiences.
Return to Germany
Gröning was released and returned to Germany in 1947 or 1948. Upon being reunited with his wife, he said: "Girl, do both of us a favor: don't ask." He was unable to regain his job at the bank due to having been a member of the SS, so he got a job at a glass factory, working his way up to a management position. He became head of personnel, and was made an honorary judge of industrial tribunal cases.Upon return to Germany, Gröning lived with his father's in-laws. At the dinner table, they once made "a silly remark about Auschwitz", implying that he was a "potential or real murderer", which Gröning said he exploded at, banging his fist on the table, saying: "This word and this connection are never, ever, to be mentioned again in my presence, otherwise I'll move out!" Gröning said that this request was respected.
Views on Holocaust denial
Gröning led a normal middle-class life after the war. A keen stamp collector, he was once at his local philatelyPhilately
Philately is the study of stamps and postal history and other related items. Philately involves more than just stamp collecting, which does not necessarily involve the study of stamps. It is possible to be a philatelist without owning any stamps...
club's annual meeting more than 40 years after the war, when he fell into a conversation about politics with the man next to him. The man told him it was "terrible" that Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the act of denying the genocide of Jews in World War II, usually referred to as the Holocaust. The key claims of Holocaust denial are: the German Nazi government had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews, Nazi authorities did not use extermination camps and gas...
was illegal in Germany, and went on to tell Gröning how so many bodies could not have been burnt, and that the volume of gas that was supposed to have been used would have killed all living things in the vicinity.
Gröning said nothing in response to these statements, replying only: "I know a little more about that, we should discuss it some time." The man recommended a pamphlet by Holocaust denier Thies Christophersen
Thies Christophersen
Thies Christophersen , a farmer by upbringing, was a prominent German Holocaust denier.-Christophersen and the "Auschwitz Lie":...
. Gröning obtained a copy and mailed it to Christophersen, having written his own commentary on it, which included the words:
Gröning then began receiving phone calls and letters from strangers who tried to tell him Auschwitz was not actually a place for exterminating human beings in gas chambers.
It became apparent that his comments condemning Holocaust denial had been printed in a neo-Nazi
Neo-Nazism
Neo-Nazism consists of post-World War II social or political movements seeking to revive Nazism or some variant thereof.The term neo-Nazism can also refer to the ideology of these movements....
magazine, and that most of the anonymous calls and letters were, "From people who tried to prove that what I had seen with my own eyes, what I had experienced in Auschwitz was a big, big mistake, a big hallucination on my part because it hadn't happened."
As a result of such comments, Gröning decided to speak openly about his experiences, and publicly denounce people who maintain the events he witnessed never happened. He says his message to Holocaust deniers is:
He also wrote memoirs for his family, consisting of 87 pages.
Contemporary comments
Gröning does not consider himself guilty of any crime, pointing to the fact that he was not directly involved in the killing. He describes his part in the extermination machine as an involuntary "small cog in the gears," which gave him involuntary guilt in turn. Citing his summons to testify against a member of the SS accused of murdering prisoners at Auschwitz, he also says he is innocent in the eyes of the law, pointing to the fact that he spoke as a witness and not as a defendant.Although Gröning requested to leave Auschwitz after he witnessed the killing, Laurence Rees
Laurence Rees
Laurence Rees is a British historian. He is the former Creative Director of History Programs for the BBC, a documentary filmmaker, and the author of five books on war.-Biography:...
writes that this was only on the basis of its practical implementation, and that the principle of Jews being exterminated itself was not something that Gröning objected to. Indeed he thought it was justified due to all the Nazi propaganda he had been subjected to, in that Germany's enemies were being destroyed, which to him made the tools of their destruction (such as gas chambers) of no particular significance. Because of this, he says his feelings about seeing people and knowing that they had hours to live before being gassed were "very ambiguous". He explains that children were murdered because, while the children themselves were not the enemy, the danger was the blood within them, in that they could grow up to become dangerous Jews. Rees points to Gröning's ultra-nationalist upbringing as indication of how he was able to justify the extermination of helpless women and children. Gröning says that the horrors in the gas chambers did eventually dawn on him when he heard the screams.
Rees writes that Gröning describes his time at Auschwitz as if he were talking about another Oskar Gröning at Auschwitz—and as a result, the post-war Gröning speaks more candidly about his time there by segregating the Gröning that contributed to the running of a death camp from the modern Gröning that condemns Nazi ideology.
Gröning says that the screams of those in the gas chambers have never left him, and has never returned to Auschwitz because of his shame. He says he feels guilt towards the Jewish people, and for being part of the organisation that committed crimes against them, despite "not having been one of the perpetrators myself". He asks for God's forgiveness and forgiveness from the Jewish people.