THE ACCOUNTANT OF AUSCHWITZ

In 2015, 94-year-old former German SS officer Oskar Gröning, nicknamed “The
Accountant of Auschwitz,” went on trial, charged with complicity in the murder of
300,000 Jews at Auschwitz in 1944. Gröning’s trial made headlines as a frail old man
took the stand to face his former victims. Out of the 6,500 SS guards at Auschwitz, only
49 were prosecuted in West Germany. It was hard for the German public to accept
that so many of its citizens were responsible for the horrific crimes committed under
the Third Reich. Many of the lawyers and judges writing the new legal code were
themselves former Nazis. Now, 70 years later, a new generation of lawyers armed with
a change in legal thinking opened up investigations against aging Nazi guards.