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Ex-SS Guard: Trains Queued At Auschwitz

A former SS guard has told how short queues of trains carrying Jews used to form at Auschwitz because the camp was so busy having prisoners "processed".

Oskar Groening, who is being tried on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder, described seeing prisoners brought in cattle cars and stripped of their belongings, before most of them were led directly to gas chambers.

Though he was usually assigned to the camp's Auschwitz I section, the 93-year-old described three times he was on duty at Birkenau - or Auschwitz II, where gas chambers were located - as people arrived by train.

He said the arrivals were "very orderly".

"They had no idea what was going on," he said, before adding that some were more suspicious.

Groening told Lueneburg state court in Germany that so many trains were arriving that often two would have to wait with closed doors as the first was emptied.

Auschwitz survivors have described their arrival as chaotic, with Nazi guards shouting orders, dogs barking and families being ripped apart.

But Groening disputed these claims on the second day of his trial, saying "it was very orderly and not as strenuous" on the ramp at Birkenau as it was at Auschwitz I.

He said: "Someone said that 5,000 people were processed in 24 hours but I didn't verify this. I didn't know. For the sake of order we waited until train 1 was entirely processed and finished."

He told the court: "The capacity of the gas chambers and the capacity of the crematoria were quite limited."

The charges against Groening relate to the period between May and July 1944.

Around 425,000 Jews from Hungary were brought to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in Nazi-occupied Poland during that time, and most were immediately gassed to death.

He said as his trial opened on Tuesday that he considers himself "morally guilty" , but it was up to the court to decide if he was legally guilty.

Groening faces between three and 15 years in prison if convicted. The trial is expected to last until at least the end of July.