(CNN) — A court in Germany sentenced former Nazi officer Oskar Groening, known as “the bookkeeper of Auschwitz,” to four years in prison on Wednesday.
Groening, who’s in his 90s, was found guilty by the Lueneburg court of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland during World War II.
He was accused of counting the cash found in the belongings of new arrivals at the camp and sending it to Nazi headquarters in Berlin.
“In deciding the penalty, the court in particular considered the plaintiff’s age and that he should have a chance to spend some part of his life in freedom after serving his sentence,” a court statement said.
But the court did not accept that Groening deserved a lighter sentence, since he did not help clarify other possible crimes committed by other SS members he knew, the statement said.
Groening’s trial began in April, at which point he acknowledged being “morally complicit” in what happened at the camp, where more than one million Jews died.
