The International Auschwitz Committee (IAC) emphatically supports the criticism expressed by the lawyers of the joint plaintiffs at the Auschwitz trial in Lüneburg concerning the sentence demanded by the prosecution. The public prosecutor proposed a sentence of three-and-a-half years for the former SS man Oskar Gröning who is being charged with accessory to murder in 300,000 cases.

In Berlin Christoph Heubner, Vice President of the IAC said: “Six minutes and thirteen seconds imprisonment for a human life. That would be the ratio between the sentence and the 300,000 murdered people for whose deaths Mr Gröning stands accused of joint responsibility. The length of the requested sentence is not even symbolically just in relationship to the matter on trial, and it leaves the survivors with nothing but a bitter aftertaste.
 
In 2011, John Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years in jail for being an accessory to the murder of almost 30,000 people. An absurd sentence that shows how inadequately a sentence can express the magnitude of these crimes in terms of days and years.”
 
Mr Heubner went on to say: “At the trial in Lüneburg it is not a question of the number of days that Gröning should spend in prison in his old age. Both the lawyers and the survivors of Auschwitz death camp as witnesses have repeatedly made this clear during the trial. It is more a question of the accused finally acknowledging his responsibility and his guilt for the crimes in Auschwitz. Even though a judgement against Gröning comes decades too late, it nevertheless helps to mitigate the spiritual sufferings of the survivors.”