German prosecutors said Monday they were notified that a former Nazi death camp guard dubbed the "Accountant of Auschwitz" died before he could begin serving his four-year jail sentence.
Hannover prosecutor Kathrin Soefker said a lawyer informed her office that Oskar Groening, 96, died Friday in a hospital. The office is awaiting an official death certificate, Soefker said.
The lawyer, Hans Holtermann, didn't immediately respond to a request for confirmation. Groening's death was first reported Monday by German weekly Der Spiegel.
Groening first came to attention in 2005 after giving interviews about his work in the camp in an attempt to persuade Holocaust deniers that the genocide had taken place at a time when most Holocaust prosecutions still focused on leaders rather than rank-and-file perpetrators.
Groening was convicted in Lueneburg in 2015 as an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews. The Lueneburg court concluded that although there was no evidence of involvement in a specific killing, Groening knew that Jews were being slaughtered at the German death camp and supported the killings through his actions.
Groening admitted he was morally guilty for the work he carried out at Auschwitz, which included overseeing the collection of prisoners' belongings and ensuring that valuables and cash were separated to be sent to Berlin to help fund the Nazi war effort – the actions that earned him the "Accountant of Auschwitz" label.
He said he witnessed individual atrocities but did not acknowledge participating in any crimes.
All of his appeals were rejected, and it was only his ill health that kept him from being sent to prison in recent years. Most recently, his lawyers made one final bid for clemency, a decision which was still pending at the time of his death.
Efraim Zuroff, the head Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said it was unfortunate that Groening's conviction didn't result in "at least symbolic justice" for the victims of Auschwitz.
In 2011, former Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk became the first person convicted in Germany solely for serving as a death camp guard without evidence of being involved in a specific killing. Demjanjuk had always denied serving at the Sobibor camp and died before his appeal could be heard.
In 2016, former SS sergeant Reinhold Hanning was convicted on 170,000 counts of accessory to murder for serving as an Auschwitz guard. He, too, died before he could begin serving his five-year sentence.
Hanning apologized for his wartime service, telling Holocaust survivors that "it disturbs me deeply" to have been a part of the Nazis' genocidal machinery.
