96-year-old 'bookkeeper of Auschwitz' fit to serve jail sentence

An application to spare former concentration camp guard Oskar Groening from prison has been rejected by German authorities. Photo / Getty

A 96-year-old former SS guard is fit to go to prison for his role in mass murder, German authorities have ruled.

Oskar Groening - who convicted for his role at the Auschwitz death camp during World War Two - must serve his four year jail term handed down by a court two years ago.

Because of his advanced age, authorities have been reluctant to enforce the jail sentence imposed in 2015 for his role in the murders of 300,000 Jews at the Nazi's extermination centre in occupied Poland.

But now the public prosecutor of Hanover has rejected his legal pleas for a further delay, saying: "We rejected the request of the defence for a reprieve. We believe he should serve his jail sentence."

Media reports said that the requisite medical and nursing care that Groening will require in jail has to be finalised before he is taken to a prison to serve his term which will amount to less than two years with good behaviour.

But his lawyers are to mount another legal appeal, arguing that he is unfit to spend time behind bars, the Daily Mail reports.

Groening was known as the "Accountant of Auschwitz" because he was responsible for sorting through the possessions of the doomed and sending cash and valuables back to his SS masters in Berlin.

He was sentenced to four years in prison in July 2015 by the State Court in Lüneburg for aiding the murder in at least 300,000 cases.

His testimony about the wholesale slaughter of innocents in the camp, where an estimated 1.2 million people were murdered, was considered historically important in refuting the claims of Holocaust deniers who persist in the lie that the murder of six million Jews never happened.