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Oskar Gröning (sometimes transliterated as Oscar Groening in English; born 10 June 1921) is a German former SS-''Unterscharführer'' who was stationed at Auschwitz concentration camp. His responsibilities included counting and sorting the money taken from prisoners, and he was in charge of the effects prisoners had arrived with. On a few occasions he witnessed the procedures of mass-killing in the camp, and each time requested transfer. After being transferred from Auschwitz to a combat unit in October 1944, Gröning was captured by the British on 10 June 1945 when his unit surrendered. He was eventually transferred to Britain as a prisoner of war and worked as a forced labourer. Upon his return to Germany he led a normal life, reluctant to talk about his time in Auschwitz. However, more than 40 years later, he decided to make his activities at Auschwitz public after learning about Holocaust denial. He has since openly criticised those who deny the events that he witnessed, and the ideology to which he once subscribed. The recorded accounts he provided to the BBC, however, contributed to the decision and ability to prosecute him. His record as an activist against Holocaust deniers since 1985 was not taken into consideration. Groening has been notable as a German willing to make public statements about his experience as an SS soldier, which are self-incriminating and have exposed his life to public scrutiny. In September 2014 Gröning was charged by German prosecutors as an accessory to murder, in 300,000 cases, for his role at the Auschwitz concentration camp. His trial began in April 2015, after the court had ruled that, at the age of 93, he was still fit to stand trial. The trial was held in Lüneburg, Germany. On 15 July 2015 he was found guilty of facilitating mass murder and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. ==Early life== Gröning was born in 1921,〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=The case against the 'accountant of Auschwitz' )〕 in Lower Saxony, 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 the First World War, 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 states that his childhood was one of "discipline, obedience and authority".〔 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.〔 He joined the Scharnhorst, the Stahlhelm's youth organisation as a small boy in the 1930s, and later the Hitler Youth 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 present 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.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Oskar Gröning」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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