German court suspends trial against ex-Auschwitz medic Zafke, 95

A German court Monday suspended the trial of former SS medic Hubert Zafke for aiding in 3,681 murders in Auschwitz after the 95-year-old failed to attend over health problems.

Chief judge Klaus Kabisch put the proceedings on hold shortly after they opened, saying a doctor who examined the defendant on Sunday found that he had "suicidal thoughts and was suffering from stress reaction and hypertension".

He was therefore "not in a state" to be transported to the court or to be heard, the judge said.

Zafke was working at the Nazi death camp from August 15 to September 14, 1944, a period when teenage diarist Anne Frank was interned there.
Prosecutors charge that by serving at Auschwitz, the former medical orderly "knew of and willingly supported the industrially organised mass killing people in an insidious and cruel manner".

Zafke's ability to stand trial had long been a key contention.

A first court had ruled against a trial, finding that he was suffering from dementia, before an appeals court overturned the decision.

It found that, despite his "cognitive impairments" and diminished physical capacity, the defendant could be granted regular breaks and close medical supervision.

Before Monday's hearing, the prosecution had also sought, but failed, to have the panel of judges recused on the grounds that they were biased towards declaring Zafke unfit to stand trial.
Following Kabisch's decision, prosectors filed a motion for a second medical opinion on the condition of Zafke.

The court has only set an initial two further hearing dates, March 14 and 30.

He risks between three and 15 years in prison, but even if convicted, Zafke is unlikely to serve any time behind bars given his advanced age.

- 'Only first aid' -

Zafke, a farmer's son who joined the Nazi party's elite police force the Waffen-SS at age 19, initially fought on the eastern front before he was sent to the death camp in occupied Poland.

During the month-long period when he was on duty at Auschwitz, 14 trains arrived, delivering prisoners from across Europe to its slave labour camps and gas chambers.
One of the trains brought the family of Anne Frank, whose diary about her Jewish family's life in hiding in Amsterdam has moved millions and remains a worldwide bestseller.

Anne Frank survived Auschwitz but died in Bergen-Belsen, shortly before its 1945 liberation by the British army.

After World War II, a Polish court in 1948 sentenced Zafke to a four-year jail term from which he was released in 1951.

During his time as a medical orderly -- a job that entailed giving lethal injections to inmates -- Zafke has claimed to have only performed first aid and treated prisoners.

He has told investigators he had no clue Auschwitz was an extermination camp and thought the crematoriums were heating plants.

- Legal precedent -

For many decades, Germany only tried Nazi officers for atrocities they personally committed and usually required eye-witness testimony for a conviction.

However, a new legal precedent was set in the 2009-2011 trial of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-born guard at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland, who was convicted at age 91 of having aided in the mass killings.

Last July, 94-year-old Oskar Groening, known as the "bookkeeper of Auschwitz," was sentenced to four years in prison for being an accessory to the murders of 300,000 people at the camp.
Around a dozen more cases are pending or under investigation, authorities say.

One million European Jews died between 1940 and 1945 at the Auschwitz camp in the southern Polish city of Oswiecim, before it was liberated by Soviet forces.

More than 100,000 others were also killed there, including non-Jewish Poles, Roma, gays and lesbians, Soviet prisoners of war and anti-Nazi resistance fighters.
Source: AFP