Oskar Gröning trial: 93-year-old Auschwitz guard admits he was 'morally complicit' in holocaust crimes

A frail, white-haired former Nazi SS guard has described in harrowing detail how he watched one of his comrades batter to death the baby of a Jewish prisoner at the Auschwitz extermination camp and admitted that was “morally complicit” in the crimes against humanity committed during the Holocaust.

93-year-old Oskar Gröning, who served in the SS at Auschwitz from 1942 until 1944, shook visibly as he told a court in the German city of Lüneburg how, shortly after he arrived at the Nazi death camp, he was dispatched to the so-called “ramp” where prisoners were selected either for work or immediate death in the gas chambers.

“There was a little baby left lying behind on the ramp, after the main group was marched away, and it was crying,” Gröning told the court, “I turned round and saw one of my comrades pick up the child. He grabbed it by the legs and smashed it again and again against the iron side of a truck until it was silent - when I saw that my world broke down,” he added.