Auschwitz (23 page)

Significantly, Groening did not complain to his boss about the
principle
of murdering the Jews, merely its practical implementation. When he saw people in front of him who he knew were going to die within hours in the gas chambers, he says his feelings were “very ambiguous.” He says,

When pressed for the reason why children were murdered, Groening replies: “The children are not the enemy at the moment. The enemy is the blood in them. The enemy is their growing up to become a Jew who could be dangerous. And because of that the children were also affected.”

Clues as to how it was possible that Oskar Groening felt helpless women and children were “enemies” who had to face “extermination” can be found in his life before he was posted to Auschwitz. He was born in 1921 in Lower Saxony, son of a skilled textile worker. Groening's father was a traditional conservative, “proud of what Germany had achieved.” One of Groening's earliest memories is of looking at photographs of his grandfather, who served in an elite regiment of soldiers from the Duchy of Brunswick: “His position impressed me terribly when I was a boy—he was sitting on his horse and playing his trumpet. It was fascinating.”

After Germany's defeat in World War I Groening's father joined the right-wing Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet), one of the many ultra-nationalist organizations that flourished in the wake of what they proclaimed was the humiliating peace of Versailles. His father's anger at the way Germany had been treated grew more intense as his personal circumstances became more strained—lacking capital, his textile business went bankrupt in 1929. In the early 1930s young Oskar joined the Stahlhelm's youth organization, the Scharnhorst: “I wore a military gray cap, shirt and trousers. We looked rather odd, but we were proud of it. And we also wore black, white, and red, the colors of the former flag of Emperor Wilhelm.”

Nothing felt more natural for Oskar Groening, who was only eleven years old when the Nazis came to power in 1933, than to ease from the Stahlhelm's Scharnhorst into the Hitler Youth. He adopted the values of his parents and judged that the Nazis “were the people who wanted the best for Germany and who did something about it.” As a member of the Hitler Youth he took part in the burning of books written by “Jews or others who were degenerate.” And he believed that, by doing so, he was helping rid Germany of an inappropriate, alien culture. At the same time, he thought National Socialism was demonstrably working on the economic front:

In the meantime, young Oskar went to school, and though feeling he was at times “rather lazy and perhaps a little bit stupid” he eventually finished high in his final class and, at seventeen, began a traineeship as a bank clerk. Just a few months after he started work in the bank war was declared; eight out of the twenty clerks were immediately conscripted into the army and their places taken by young women. This meant that the remaining trainees such as Groening could “get jobs they would have never normally reached. For example, I had to take over the cash till.”

Despite this unexpected advance in their banking careers, as they heard news of Germany's quick victories in Poland and France the trainees were filled with “euphoria” and a feeling that “you wanted to be part of it” and “you wanted to help.” Oskar Groening wanted to join an “elite” unit of the German army, just as his grandfather had done. And for this young man only one unit fulfilled his dream.

So, without telling his father, Oskar went along to a hotel where the Waffen SS were recruiting and joined up. “And when I came home my father said, ‘I was hoping that because you were wearing glasses you wouldn't be accepted.' And then he said, ‘I'm sorry, but you'll see what you'll get out of this.'”

What Oskar Groening got out of his membership of this elite corps was, initially, a job in SS administration as a bookkeeper. He was not at all displeased by this posting: “I'm a desk person. I wanted to work in a job that had both the soldier's life and also the bureaucratic aspect.” He worked as a bookkeeper for a year until September 1942, when the order came through that fit, healthy members of the SS working in salary administration centers were to be transferred to more challenging duties, with the administrative jobs reserved for returning veterans disabled at the front: “So, under the assumption that we would now enter a fighting unit, about twenty-two of us went with our luggage and got on a train to Berlin. It was
very strange, because generally an order would have come for us to go to a troop-mustering place–but that didn't happen.”

Groening and his comrades reported to one of the SS economic offices, located in a “beautiful building” in the capital. They were then directed to a conference room where they were addressed by several high-ranking SS officers.

Once in the courtyard of the building, Groening and his comrades were split into smaller groups, given their individual destinations, and then transported to various Berlin stations where they boarded trains. “We went south,” says Oskar Groening, “in the direction of Katowice. And our troop leader, who had the papers, said we had to report to the commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp. I'd never heard of Auschwitz before.”

Groening and his group arrived late in the evening and were directed by military police to the main camp, where they reported to the central administrative building and were allocated “provisional” bunks in the SS barracks. The other members of the SS they met in the barracks that night were friendly and welcoming. “We were accepted by the people who were there and they said, ‘Have you eaten anything yet?' We hadn't, and so they got us something.” Groening was surprised that in addition to the basic SS rations of bread and sausage there was also extra food available, consisting of tins of herring and sardines. Their new friends also had rum and vodka, which they put on the table and said, “Help yourself.”

After a good night's sleep, Groening reported once more with the other new arrivals to the central SS administrative building. They were quizzed by a number of senior SS officers about their background before the war:

So far Oskar Groening's personal experience of Auschwitz was that it was a “normal” concentration camp, albeit one where the rations for the SS members were particularly good. But, as he began his task of registering the prisoners' money, he learned for the first time about the additional, “unusual” function of Auschwitz. “The people there [working in the barracks] let us know that this money didn't all go back to the prisoners—Jews were taken to the camp who were treated differently. The money was taken off them without them getting it back.” Groening asked, “Is this to do with the ‘transport' that arrived during the night?” His colleagues replied, “Well, don't you know? That's the way it is here. Jewish transports arrive, and as far as they're not able to work they're got rid of.” Groening pressed them on what “got rid of ” actually meant, and, having been told, says that his reaction was one of astonishment.

To meet Oskar Groening today, and listen to his attempt to explain his time at Auschwitz, is a strange experience. Now in his eighties, he talks almost as if there was another Oskar Groening who worked at Auschwitz sixty years ago—and about that “other” Groening he can be brutally honest. Crucially, he shields himself from taking full responsibility for playing a part in the extermination process by constantly referring to the power of the propaganda to which he was exposed, and the effect on him of the ultra-nationalistic family atmosphere in which he grew up. Only after the war, once he was exposed to another worldview—one that questioned the Nazis' assumptions about the “international Jewish conspiracy” and the role of the Jews in World War I—was the “new” Oskar Groening able to emerge, fit to face life as a useful citizen in the modern, democratic Germany.

This is not to say that Groening attempts to hide behind the “acting under orders” defense. He does not present himself as a mindless automaton who would have followed any command given to him. When the suggestion is put to him that he would have accepted Aryan children being murdered at Auschwitz, he rejects it absolutely. He makes a lie of the notion, prevalent among some historians, that the SS men were so brutalized by their training that they would have killed anyone they were asked to. No, Groening's decision-making process operated at a much less simplistic level. Yes, he claims that he was massively influenced by the propaganda of the times, but during the war he nevertheless made a series of personal choices. He carried on working at Auschwitz not just because he was ordered
to but because, having weighed the evidence put before him, he thought that the extermination program was right. Once the war was over he disputed the accuracy of the evidence put before him, but he did not claim that he acted as he did because he was some kind of robot. Throughout his life he believes he did what he thought was “right”; it's just that what was “right” then turns out not to be “right” today.

We should not be unduly cynical about such a coping mechanism. Of course he could have chosen differently—he could have rejected the values of his community and resisted. He could have deserted from Auschwitz (although there is no record of any member of the SS doing so as a result of refusing on moral grounds to work in the camp). It would have taken an exceptional human being to act in such a way, however, and the essential—almost frightening—point about Oskar Groening is that he is one of the least exceptional human beings you are ever likely to meet. After a few years as a prisoner of war, he got a job as a personnel manager in a glassmaking factory where he worked quietly until he reached retirement. The only abnormality in Groening's otherwise ultra-normal life is the time he spent working in Auschwitz.

A study of the historical-sociological profile of the SS in Auschwitz, based on statistical records, found that “the SS camp force was not exceptional in its occupation structure or in its levels of education. The camp staff was very much like the society from which it was drawn.”
²⁰
Oskar Groening perfectly illustrates this conclusion. He was also typical in that he was a rank-and-file member of the SS—the highest rank he attained was Rottenführer (corporal).