Atrocity Then, Trial Now: The Aesthetics, Acoustics, and Visualities of Prosecuting Oskar Gröning

Charged with aiding and abetting in the murder of three hundred thousand Hungarian Jews deported to AuschwitzAuschwitz between 16 May 1944 and 11 July 1944, Oskar GröningGröning, Oskar, the ‘bookkeeper of Auschwitz’, was sentenced in 2015 by the Lüneburg Regional Court to four years’ imprisonment. After a series of unsuccessful appeals, GröningGröning, Oskar died in 2018, at the age of 96, having never spent a day in jail. This contribution unpacks the charges against GröningGröning, Oskar and his resultant convictionConviction; examines the involvement of elderly victims as accusers and their roles in this trial; and, ultimately, contemplates how it all ‘looked’ and ‘sounded’. The focus is thus not only on GröningGröning, Oskar himself, but on the totality of the trial of GröningGröning, Oskar. Throughout, this contribution gazes upon the aesthetics, acoustics, and visualities of this trial and interrogates the representational credibility of dallied proceedings that occur 70—increasingly, 80—years after the fact. This chapter concludes by positing that however absurd it may seem to put a feeble old man on trial, the feebleness that oozes from not prosecuting such a man may prove even more absurd.