BERLIN — A 94-year-old former SS sergeant who served in Auschwitz testified Wednesday that he helped the death camp function in his role sorting cash and valuables seized from Jews after they arrived in cattle-cars.
Oskar Groening told the state court in a statement read by his attorney that it was hard today to understand the blind obedience he had to the Nazi system, even when witnessing atrocities at the death camp in German-occupied Poland.
‘‘There was a self-denial in me that today I find impossible to explain,’’ Groening said, the DPA news agency reported. ‘‘Perhaps it was also the convenience of obedience with which we were brought up, which allowed no contradiction. This indoctrinated obedience prevented registering the daily atrocities as such and rebelling against them.’’
Groening is accused of helping Auschwitz function in his job, for which the German press has dubbed him the ‘‘Accountant of Auschwitz.’’ His main task was to collect and tally money stolen from the new arrivals and send it to Berlin.
Though pleas are not entered in the German system, as Groening’s trial on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder opened in April he said he felt a moral guilt for what he had done. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted.