The Accountant of Auschwitz

In 2015, 94-year-old former German SS officer Oskar Gröning, nicknamed “The Accountant of Auschwitz,” went on trial in his home country, charged with complicity in the murder of 300,000 Jews at Auschwitz in 1944. Gröning’s trial reflects not only one frail bookkeeper’s penitence, but the world’s responsibility to hold the worst of human horrors forever to public view. The Accountant of Auschwitz asks fundamental moral questions with few simple answers. The debate around bringing war criminals to justice, with no statute of limitations, from Nuremberg to the new alt-right, constructs a stark reminder that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.