Luke 17:28-30 “Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built” but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.
A former SS guard on trial in Germany has provided chilling details about the operations of the camp and the lives of those who were imprisoned there.
Oskar Groening is facing 300,000 counts of accessory to murder in connection with his service at the camp from May to July 1944 when Jews from Hungary were brought to the camp and almost immediately murdered.
Groening testified that during the time so many trains full of Jews were coming to the camp that they sometimes had to wait with doors closed while other trains were emptied and processed into the camp. He testified about one night where he worked 24 hours straight on the ramp at Birkenau where the Jews were brought into the camp and it was “a busy shift”indicating there was non-stop arrivals of victims.
“The capacity of the gas chambers and the capacity of the crematoria were quite limited. Someone said that 5,000 people were processed in 24 hours but I didn’t verify this. I didn’t know,” he said. “For the sake of order we waited until train 1 was entirely processed and finished.”
A surprising part of the testimony was Groening contracting many survivors claims that the process was chaotic, saying it was “very orderly”.
“The process was the same as Auschwitz I. The only difference was that there were no trucks,” he said during the second day of his trial. “They all walked —some in one direction some, in another direction … to where the crematoria and gas chambers were.”
Survivors and their families said they would be satisfied with any confessions given by Groening.
“I’m going to take whatever confession he gives —it’s better than no confession,” survivor Eva Kor, 81, told reporters. “Maybe this is the best thing he has ever done in his life. Isn’t that sad?”
