As International Holocaust Remembrance Day — today — approached, we’ve been thinking a lot about Groening and what his trial and conviction means to the world, seven decades after the end of the Second World War.

Post-Eichmann, Hannah Arendt’s phrase, “the banality of evil” has entered the language as a means of looking at the Holocaust as a marriage of murder and technology that birthed nameless and faceless functionaries who neither pulled a trigger nor a lever, but performed duties without which the wheels of death and destruction could not have turned. The role of such persons is described in many ways but the word that sticks is a German one: Schreibtischtater — desk perpetrator. 

Despite the titillating dissonance of “accountant of Auschwitz”, Groening was no desk perpetrator. He was a member of the SS and was assigned to Auschwitz for 25 months. In addition to his inventory duties he also did regular tours of duty on the “ramp” in Birkenau, and by his presence helped to maintain order in a process where hundreds of thousands of helpless Jewish men, women and children delivered, sorted, stripped, searched and murdered. 

Beyond this sad recitation of facts, already familiar to scholars and serious students of the period, what can Oskar Groening teach us? A fair bit about the fragile nature of humanity. 

To begin, he could be more fairly described as the coward of Auschwitz. 

Groening’s father was a member of the Stahlhelm, a post-First World War paramilitary organization that supported the rise of fascism — and ultimate triumph of Nazism — in Germany. Oscar was a member of the Hitler Youth who joined the SS for the uniform and for the glory (even though he never wanted to actually fight). 

Despite the usefulness of his testimony in other cases, he never seems to have understood that he was more than morally guilty for what he did. Perhaps as Gitta Sereny observed of Franz Stangl, the Commandant of Treblinka, he was more focused on what he did (or did not) do rather than what he became.

The law may need to make a distinction between those who “aid and abet” and those who are “accomplices” but one thing seems clear: Groening was an opportunist who found an agreeable, safe and well-fed place for himself and sat out the war counting dead people’s money, eating dead people’s food and drinking dead people’s vodka.

He and his colleagues feasted on the plundered goods of murdered Jews. He was not disturbed by the abundance because the people from whom it had been stolen “no longer needed them.” He knew the killings were going on, thought they were “OK” (the transcript tells us that he “came to terms with the ‘disposal’” of the people) and stayed at the camp (rather than ask for a transfer) because he had no interest in being a front-line soldier. He only asked for a transfer when it became a better choice than waiting to be captured by the Soviets … in Auschwitz … in an SS uniform. 

It’s precisely in this cowardice and its exposure that a lesson for the 21st century can be extracted. 

There’s no doubt that human monsters walk among us. But men like Hitler and Heydrich and Eichmann were “only” the ones with the vision that ignited the genocide. Such people, while necessary to trigger such a catastrophe, are not sufficient. They require accomplices, functionaries, servants to make their ideas a reality. But beneath them — look way down — you need the grunts like Groening who buy into the project, follow the party line, join for the snappy uniform and stay for the comfy beds and the catering.  

We forget, at our peril, the pliability of human nature, the dangers of conformity and obedience and the ease with which the most horrible things can become normal. Genocide sadly comes in many shapes and sizes, the Holocaust perhaps being the genocide most widely known and studied. But make no mistake, whether its Armenia, Rwanda, or yes even the form of cultural genocide that targeted Canada’s First Nations, it took men like Oskar Groening to make it happen.

Originally published HERE.