Auschwitz Medic Charged

Apparently another one.
"A 94-year-old man alleged to have worked as a medic in Auschwitz has been charged with 3,681 counts of accessory to murder because prosecutors say his actions would have enabled the death camp to keep running.
Schwerin prosecutors' spokesman Stefan Urbanek said today the suspect was a former SS sergeant who served in an SS hospital at the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland.
Urbanek would not release the suspect's name in line with privacy laws.
The man is one of 30 people under investigation because they are suspected to have held roles in Auschwitz during the Second World War.
Federal investigators recommended back in 2013 that state prosecutors pursue charges against them under a new precedent in German law.
The man's attorney, Peter-Michael Diestel, told the Bild newspaper there's no evidence of any 'concrete criminal act' by his client.
The man is one of 30 under investigation because they are suspected to have held roles in Auschwitz
Officials say the man helped the extermination camp to function and he can therefore be charged as an accessory to the brutal killings - 1.1 million people are believed to have been murdered at the camp
The arrest comes less than a week after a 93-year-old man was charged with 170,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he served as an SS guard at Auschwitz.
The defendant allegedly served in Auschwitz between January 1942 to June 1944, the Detmold state court said last week.
It is claimed this second man was assigned to the Auschwitz I camp but also helped supervise new prisoners, largely Jews, as they arrived in Auschwitz-
The North-Rhine Westphalia centre said the accused was deployed to the Nazi death camp in January 1942.
While there it is alleged he worked as a member of the SS Death's Head guard battalion and was responsible for guarding trains of Jews arriving at the death camp.
He is also alleged to have worked in 'selection', which involved marking newly-arrived inmates for immediate death or sending them to work."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2965474/Alleged-Auschwitz-medic-charged-3-681-counts-accessory-murder.html#ixzz3Scehmnu5

 

I'm glad they are starting to clamp down on these people now especially those who are accused of being involved in the selection process. Those people make me sneer. Only I hope they get everything taken care of because looking at the age of this man, it doesnt look like they have much time left.

 

His lasting legacy will be of a sadistic murderer. All his family and friends will know the truth. It's never too late in my book, though I wish he was convicted decades ago.

 

It's amazing to think there are so many still free from justice like this. I think the more publicity the better. Hopefully it will spark lots of discussion and educate a new generation of these atrocities.

 

*bump for an update*
"An elderly German man recently indicted on mass murder charges for his time spent at Auschwitz in WW2 was on duty when Jewish diarist Anne Frank arrived.
Hubert Zafke, now 94, was present when Anne came in on a train carrying 498 men, 442 women and 79 children from Holland's Westerbork concentration camp on September 5, 1944, prosecution documents released at the weekend show.
Anne, whose memoir of a life in hiding from the Nazis became the single most poignant piece of Holocaust literature, was later transferred to the Belsen concentration camp in Germany where she died early in 1945. Only her father would survive the war.
Zafke is now charged in the complicity of 3,681 murders - victims who were gassed or shot when he was on duty.
Although classed as a medic, such personnel at Auschwitz were not concerned with the health of inmates, but often poured Zyklon-B pesticide crystals into the gas chamber to murder them. More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were liquidated at Auschwitz.
The indictment shows that Zafke, who now lives in the tiny village of Gnevkow north of Berlin, joined the Hitler Youth when he was a teenager in his hometown of Schoenau, which now lies in Poland.
The son of a farmer, he attended high school and an agricultural college intending to follow in his father's footsteps.
In 1933, aged 13, he joined the Hitler Youth and six years later was in the SS. He received his grounding in concentration camp training at Dachau, the first of the Nazi camps where 36,000 people were murdered during its 12-year operation.
As a junior squad leader - a rank usually given to men singled out as future officer material - Zafke transferred to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. He is charged with being an accomplice to the murders of the 3,681 victims between August 14 and September 14, 1944.
Prosecutors said: 'He is not charged with any single specific murder but as a functionary in the Nazi murder machine which he enabled.'
Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, now World Holocaust Day, but Zafke had already gone west and fell into British hands."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2986296/SS-guard-94-accused-complicity-3-681-deaths-duty-Auschwitz-Anne-Frank-arrived-documents-reveal.html#ixzz3Tu7xcrQz

 

*BUMP* for an update.
Unbelievable...another one walks with the dementia get-out-of-jail-free card.
"A German court says it will not proceed with the trial of a former SS sergeant who served as a medic in the Auschwitz death camp because the 94-year-old is suffering from dementia.
The Neubrandenburg state court today confirmed that experts had determined that Hubert Z. was unfit for trial and that his condition was worsening.
He was accused of having served as a medic in an SS hospital in Auschwitz in 1944. Schwerin prosecutors charged him with 3,681 counts of accessory to murder earlier this year, arguing that by serving in that role he helped the extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland function.
Before today's decision Z's attorney had argued there was no evidence that his client had participated in any concrete criminal act.
It is the second time in less than a month that German prosecutors have used Alzheimer's as a reason to stop Nazi suspects from answering for their crimes.
In May former S.S. officer Gerhard Sommer, 93, accused of ordering the slaughter of 560 civilians in the Tuscan mountain village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema in 1944, had the case against him dropped for the same reason.
Some 30 former S.S. guards who were stationed at such infamous places as Auschwitz were under investigation in the past 18 months.
Most have been told they have no case to answer because of the alleged fragile state of their minds.
Two expert witnesses examined Hubert Z and recommended proceedings be dropped on 'humanitarian grounds.'
In Auschwitz, he was often present at 'selections' when trains bringing inmates arrived – the time S.S. officials decided who would live as slave labourers and who would be gassed immediately.
The indictment against him said he was present for the arrival of at least 14 trains between 15 August and 14 September 1944 at the camp where an estimated 1.2 million people were killed during WW2.
Hubert Z, who lives north of Berlin in Mecklenburg, is alleged to have moved through a number of death camps, finishing his S.S. service at Auschwitz."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3134554/German-court-says-former-Auschwitz-SS-medic-unfit-trial.html

 

Another FAIL for the Daily Mail!

Ummmm...No.

What the Daily Mail article neglects to mention is that Hubert Ernst Zafke, in the Polish War Crimes Trials, was tried, convicted, sentenced, and served a 4-year prison term. So, one could say that Zafke has paid for his crimes already, and that Germany is trying him again for the same crimes.

See ID #6952: Zafke, Hubert
https://www.uni-marburg.de/icwc/forschung/2weltkrieg/polen?order=name,surname&order_type=asc&offset=1850&count=25&name=&id_trial=

If you want to be upset, be upset with the German government for waiting until these men are well into their 90's, then putting them on what is basically a "show trial."

 

You're contradicting yourself; is his name Zafke or Zamke, or are we talking about two different people because a search for Zamke says "no convictions found"?

 

Ok...You lost me. Where did Zamke enter the picture?

--EDIT: Ooops! Just spotted my typing error--


This Daily Mail article said Zafke
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2986296/SS-guard-94-accused-complicity-3-681-deaths-duty-Auschwitz-Anne-Frank-arrived-documents-reveal.html
It also mentions his serving a jail term in Poland due to his SS membership and service at Aushwitz, and that his lawyers were looking into having the case dismissed due to dementia.

With the most recent article, it seems that he has now become only Hubert Z
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3134554/German-court-says-former-Auschwitz-SS-medic-unfit-trial.html

 

Fixed...I'll blame that on a dire lack of coffee...Yeah, that's it.

 

Happens all the time, old boy.

 

Yeah, you would think that the feelings of embarrassment would fade...

 

i find that strange. "helping to keep the camp in operation and therefore is an accessory..." i doubt this new man can be proven to be party to murder, given the assumptions stated. could someone here give us a short course on criminal law?

 

WTF? A guy participates in the annihilation of the Jews, and you think with 4 years, he has paid for his crime. What Planet do you live on? Should of been your parents that got exterminated.

 

*bump* for another update-
"A former SS guard who was on duty when Jewish diarist Anne Frank arrived at the Auschwitz death camp in 1944 has been fit enough to stand trial on charges of mass murder.
Hubert Zafke, 95, was examined by psychiatric doctors this week appointed by a court in Rostock and judged mentally sound enough to go on trial for his part in the murders of 3,681 people.
Zafke served at the Nazi extermination facility in occupied Poland as a medic and claims he took no part in the estimated 1.2 million murders of Jews and others that took place there.
Earlier this year a lower court ruled Zafke was incompetent to stand trial but that has now been overturned and he could be in the dock by the early spring.
Former Auschwitz guard Hubert Zafke who has been charged with the murders of 3,681 people at the Nazi death camp
The indictment says that prisoners in the medical block at Auschwitz-Birkenau – the part of the camp where the gas chambers were located – were murdered while Zafke was on duty.
According to the indictment, Zafke is accused of knowing that he worked in an extermination camp, knew that it was an extermination camp and that he was 'supportive of the running of this extermination camp.'
in 1948 he was sentenced by a Polish court because of his S.S. membership to three years in jail,, returning to Neubrandenburg in Germany after serving his time.
Zafka was present when Anne Frank came in on a train from Holland's Westerbork concentration camp on September 5, 1944 carrying 498 men, 442 women and 79 children."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3342659/Former-Auschwitz-guard-duty-Anne-Frank-arrived-1944-deemed-fit-face-charges-murdering-3-681-people.html#ixzz3tBBg8F7d

 

IANA lawyer but Auschwitz was a large concentration/labor camp, with a purposed extermination facility in birkenau. if you did any, even the most mundane job, in a pure extermination camp, you are an accessory to multiple murder.