How Nazi guard Oskar Gröning escaped justice in 1947 for crimes at Auschwitz Exclusive: UN war crimes files reveal that SS guard Gröning faced trial after the war for his role in the Holocaust but US cold war fears led to Nazis being released SS Unterscharführer Oskar Gröning. His UN War Crimes Commission file shows that he was one of 300 Auschwitz staff whom the Polish government intended to prosecute for ‘complicity in murder and ill-treatment’ at Auschwitz. SS Unterscharführer Oskar Gröning. His UN War Crimes Commission file shows that he was one of 300 Auschwitz staff whom Poland intended to prosecute. Owen Bowcott in London and Kate Connolly in Berlin Oskar Gröning, the convicted Auschwitz death camp guard, escaped prosecution in Britain nearly 70 years ago because of the United States’ desire to fight the cold war, according to newly discovered documents. Researchers in London combing through the archives of the UN War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) have discovered that charges against him were being prepared just as the entire judicial process against Germans accused of committing war crimes was closed down after political intervention from above. Gröning escaped justice until this week when the former SS bookkeeper at Auschwitz, now aged 94, was finally found guilty of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people and sentenced to four years in prison. It is likely to be one of the last Holocaust trials. Related: 'Accountant of Auschwitz' jailed for the murder of 300,000 Jews Although he did not kill anyone while working at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during the second world war, prosecutors argued that by sorting banknotes taken from the trainloads of arriving Jews he helped support a regime responsible for mass murder. Gröning had admitted moral guilt but said it was up to the court to decide whether he was legally guilty. The trial raised the issue of whether those deemed to be small cogs in the Nazi machinery, but who did not actively participate in the killing of 6 million Jews, were guilty of crimes. British forces captured Gröning in Germany at the end of the war and, probably as an act of revenge, initially imprisoned him in an old Nazi concentration camp. The historian Laurence Rees recorded that he was shipped to England in 1946. Gröning worked as a forced labourer but reportedly “ate good food and earned money to spend”. He joined a YMCA choir and “for four months travelled through the Midlands and Scotland giving concerts”. Rees wrote that he “sang German hymns and traditional English folk songs” to appreciative British audiences who competed to have one of the Germans stay with them overnight. Justice, however, was attempting to catch up with him. Records discovered by Dan Plesch, the director of the centre for international studies and diplomacy at Soas, University of London, show that Gröning’s name appears in UNWCC files dated 6 March 1947. Gröning’s entry in the UNWCC file, listing him as a camp guard. Gröning’s entry in the UNWCC file, listing him as a camp guard. He is described as SS Unterscharführer, which translates as junior squad commander and roughly equates to senior corporal or sergeant. His date of birth is given as 10 June 1921. The “date and place of alleged crime” is entered as Auschwitz 1940-45. The words “complicity in murder and ill-treatment” are written underneath. Gröning’s war crime is recorded as “common design” – the term used by investigators at the time to denote conspiracy in acts said to include “killings, death by gas chamber, cremations of living persons and corpses, use of human beings as guinea pigs for medical experimentation … beatings, tortures, starvation, abuse and indignities”. His file number, 4771/P/G/139-137, shows that he was number 137 in a list of 300 Auschwitz staff whom the Polish government intended to prosecute for war crimes. Another recovered document is the minutes of a UNWCC meeting held at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 20 March 1947. It considered, among other cases, those of the 300 Auschwitz staff on the list drawn up by Dr Marian Muszkat, the commission’s Polish representative. Gröning was one of those listed in the proceedings as “S” – meaning suspect. “The commission was making a prima facie judgment as to whether there was a case to answer,” explained Plesch, who has examined the files. “The prosecution was required to give evidence of what the defence [in that category of cases] would be. It wrote: ‘Probable defence that they are acting under orders.’” Oskar Gröning listens to the verdict at his trial in Lüneburg, Germany. He was convicted on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder and given a four-year sentence. Oskar Gröning listens to the verdict at his trial in Lüneburg, Germany. He was convicted on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder and given a four-year sentence. The secret archive, now at Soas, contains lists of internationally approved war crimes indictments of tens of thousands of Nazis. Sixteen states, including the UK and US, worked together in London on the investigation of more than 36,000 international criminal cases between 1943 and 1948. “Gröning’s name popped up when I searched,” Plesch said. The process of drawing up a formal summons against the captured camp guard, however, coincided with diplomatic manoeuvres to wind down the UNWCC. On 24 April 1947, Sir Robert Craigie, a Foreign Office official who was present at the meeting the previous month that considered Gröning’s case, announced that the commission should not take any more cases. “The priority became to rebuild Germany,” Plesch said. Consequently, a decision was taken, despite fierce opposition by countries such as Poland and Yugoslavia, to release SS suspects being held. Even though Gröning was indicted as a suspected war criminal almost 70 years ago, he was never tried at the time. “The grand lie is that we never knew anything” about these Nazi suspects, Plesch said. “The dangerous myth is that nothing was ever done except against the Nazi leadership at Nuremberg war trials, but there was a huge effort by many countries that would have seen the likes of Gröning face trial, had it not been for the shift in policy from America. “It was said that the west had to release these Nazis to mobilise Germany against communism but why that mobilisation should involve Nazis has never been explained. Mothers with their children step off the train bringing them to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Mothers with their children step off the train bringing them to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. “The British were not keen to pick arguments with the Americans. The last attempt at pursuing justice was a hunt for the camp guards responsible for executing the Allied inmates who took part in the ‘Great Escape’ from Stalag Luft III. “By that stage no one was going to prosecute minnows like Gröning. He went back to Germany and was released.” By the early 1950s, virtually all of those being held had been set free. Another victim of the sudden ideological obsession with the cold war was the film made by Alfred Hitchcock about Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It was never shown when completed due to fear of upsetting the Germans at a time when the Soviet spectre was looming. “Gröning should have been punished at the time,” Plesch added. “It was a mistaken policy that anti-communism meant liberating the Nazis.” One of the photographs on this article was replaced on 17 July 2015.