Former Auschwitz Medic Declared Unfit to Stand Trial
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — A former Auschwitz medic, now 95, has been found unfit to stand trial for his role in the murder of more than 3,600 people at the Nazi death camp.
A court appointed physician determined that Hubert Zafke’s health is too poor to go on trial, Neubrandenburg state court told the dpa news agency Friday, according to the Associated Press. He will be examined by other experts ahead of a hearing scheduled for March 24.
Zafke’s trial failed to begin as planned on Feb. 29 after a doctor rule he was unfit to be transported to court.
He is charged with being an accomplice to the murders of 3,681 people at the death camp. Prosecutors say the medic’s unit in which he served placed the Zyklon-B pesticide crystals into Auschwitz’s gas chambers, where up to 6,000 Jews were killed per day, and was “supportive of the running of this extermination camp,” according to Deutsche Welle.
Zafke does not deny that he served at Auschwitz, but says that he did not see or participate in any of the murders. His attorney says he knew that people were being murdered at Auschwitz but never took part in the killings.
It is said that he was on duty when teenage diarist Anne Frank arrived at the death camp on Sept. 5, 1944. She later was transferred to Bergen-Belsen where she died of typhoid.
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