Viral Photo Shows Nazi Guard Oskar Groening, Not Young George Soros

Claim

Photo of George Soros in the Schutzstaffel (SS) uniform 

Fact check

A reverse image search of the viral photo, claimed to be of Soros in an SS uniform, led to multiple news reports, including the BBC, The Guardian and the New York Times, identifying the man as Oskar Groening, a former Nazi guard at the Auschwitz, accused of assisting in the murder of 300,000 victims of the Holocaust at the Auschwitz death camp between 1942 and 1944.

We learnt that Groening died in March 2018, aged 96, without ever having served his four-year sentence for being an accessory to murder. According to a Guardian report, dated March 12, 2018, Groening worked as an accountant at Auschwitz, sorting and counting the money taken from those killed or used as slave labour, and shipping it back to his Nazi superiors in Berlin. He was also on several occasions assigned to process deportees as they arrived at the Nazi German death camp in occupied Poland. “Groening was found guilty in July 2015 of being an accessory to the murders of 300,000 people at the camp and sentenced to four years in prison,” the article read, adding that Germany’s constitutional court ruled in late December that he must serve out his sentence.

The news reports credited the photo to the Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, via Associated Press, which led us to this AP report. The report stated that the photo is of a young Oskar Groening, a former SS sergeant who became known as the “Accountant of Auschwitz.,” according to information provided by the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. The photo is also on the educational portal of the Institute of National Remembrance, which collects and manages documents of state security authorities, drawn up from July 22, 1944 to July 31, 1990, conducting investigations into Nazi and communist crimes.

Result: False

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