German prosecutors have rejected a clemency request from former Nazi SS guard Oskar Gröning. Known as the "bookkeeper of Auschwitz," the 96-year-old has been convicted of being an accessory to murder in 300,000 cases.
"The clemency request has been denied," Wiebke Bethke, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors' office in Lüneburg told news agency epd. She did not provide further details.
Although his legal options are running thin, Gröning could still appeal his clemency request to the Justice Ministry of Lower Saxony, the northern state where Lüneburg is located.
The German National Socialist Workers' party profoundly affected the course of 20th-century world history with their ideology, propaganda and crimes. Who were the key leaders of the movement?
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Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)
As Hitler's Propaganda Minister, the virulently anti-Semitic Goebbels was responsible for making sure a single, iron-clad Nazi message reached every citizen of the Third Reich. He strangled freedom of the press, controlled all media, arts, and information, and pushed Hitler to declare "Total War." He and his wife committed suicide in 1945, after poisoning their six children.
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Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
The leader of the German National Socialist Workers' Party (Nazi) developed his anti-Semitic, anti-communist and racist ideology well before coming to power as Chancellor in 1933. He undermined political institutions to transform Germany into a totalitarian state. From 1939 to 1945, he led Germany in World War II while overseeing the Holocaust. He committed suicide in April 1945.
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Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)
As leader of the Nazi paramilitary SS ("Schutzstaffel"), Himmler was one of the Nazi party members most directly responsible for the Holocaust. He also served as Chief of Police and Minister of the Interior, thereby controlling all of the Third Reich's security forces. He oversaw the construction and operations of all extermination camps, in which more than 6 million Jews were murdered.
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Rudolf Hess (1894-1987)
Hess joined the Nazi party in 1920 and took part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, a failed Nazi attempt to gain power. While in prison, he helped Hitler write "Mein Kampf." Hess flew to Scotland in 1941 to attempt a peace negotiation, where he was arrested and held until the war's end. In 1946, he stood trial in Nuremberg and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died.
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Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962)
Alongside Himmler, Eichmann was one of the chief organizers of the Holocaust. As an SS Lieutenant colonel, he managed the mass deportations of Jews to Nazi extermination camps in Eastern Europe. After Germany's defeat, Eichmann fled to Austria and then to Argentina, where he was captured by the Israeli Mossad in 1960. Tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity, he was executed in 1962.
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Hermann Göring (1893-1946)
A participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Göring became the second-most powerful man in Germany once the Nazis took power. He founded the Gestapo, the Secret State Police, and served as Luftwaffe commander until just before the war's end, though he increasingly lost favor with Hitler. Göring was sentenced to death at Nuremberg but committed suicide the night before it was enacted.
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The 96-year-old was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people during his time as a guard and bookkeeper at Auschwitz and was sentenced to four years in prison.
At the end of December, Germany's Constitutional Court rejected Gröning's attempt to suspend his sentence due to health reasons. The court found no identifiable health risks and said that his prison sentence "carried a special weight."
Gröning voluntarily joined the Nazi's elite Waffen-SS at the age of 21 and was stationed at Auschwitz in 1942.
He was a bookkeeper who sorted and assessed money and valuables taken from prisoners before sending it back to his superiors in Berlin. During his trial in Lüneburg, Gröning said he felt "a moral guilt" for his work at Auschwitz, but said he had not personally been involved in mass murder.
Should Gröning decide not to appeal his clemency request, prosecutors in Hanover could soon summon him to begin serving his jail sentence.
