A 93-year-old man who served as a bookkeeper at the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz went on trial in Germany on Tuesday on charges he played a role in the murders of 300,000 people.
Oskar Groening said in court that he morally is to blame for the deaths, but told reporters outside the courtroom he expects to be acquitted of charges that he served as an accessory to murder, the Associated Press reported.
"I share morally in the guilt but whether I am guilty under criminal law, you will have to decide," he told the courtroom, according to the AP.
Groening has said in media interviews that he was eager to join the Nazis, and was 21 when he was sent to work at the camp, Reuters reported.
Groening worked at Auschwitz from 1942–1944, but the charges against him refer to the period between May and June 1944. In these few months, at least 300,000 Hungarian Jews died in the gas chambers, the AP reported.
Groening's job at the camp was going through prisoners' belongings and tallying their valuables. This earned him the nickname "Accountant of Auschwitz," the AP reported.
Groening has also given interviews about the crimes and murders he witnessed at the camp, but maintains he never killed anyone personally, Reuters reported. He has said he felt no emotion as he watched Jewish people die at the camp.
"At some point you are there and the only thing left is the feeling: I am part of this necessary thing. A horrible thing — but necessary," he has said, according to Reuters.
Groening has said he is willing to speak so freely about what he saw because he wants to fight Holocaust denial, Reuters reported.
However, he believes he is innocent in the eyes of the law because he never killed anyone himself.
German prosecutors decided decades ago not to prosecute Groening and other former Nazi members who were not directly involved in the killings.
However, in recent years German legal thinking has changed and more investigations have been opened, the AP reported.
Groening is one of three former Auschwitz guards who have had charges filed against them, and eight others are under investigation, the AP reported.
Dozens of concentration camp survivors or their family members from around the world came to Germany to witness the trial.
"Those who commit crimes today must know they will be held responsible in the future," Hedy Bohm, an Auschwitz survivor from New York, said according to Reuters. "And never again will they be able to just plead 'I'm a cog in the machinery, I didn't kill.'"