Is anyone aware of any more details about this case, that would justify putting this man on trial? Absent any actual harm he personally ordered or visited on any prisoner, I can't see how merely treating people who needed it, even if it facilitated returning them to work as slave labour, would constitute a war crime.
BERLIN — A German court says a 95-year-old man will go on trial next month on 3,681 counts of accessory to murder for allegedly serving in the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp.
Hubert Zafke is accused of working as a medic in Auschwitz in an SS hospital. Prosecutors argue that in that role, the former SS sergeant helped the death camp function.
An appeals court in December ruled he was fit for trial, though the Neubrandenburg state court said Monday that when his trial opens Feb. 29, judges will have to assess whether he needs special accommodation.
Zafke’s attorney insists his client did nothing criminal at Auschwitz.
Re: This seems like a stretch, even for me
Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:24 pm
by MajGenl.Meade
Anyvay... it's all mind over matter.
Ve don't mind and you don't matter!
Re: This seems like a stretch, even for me
Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:30 pm
by Lord Jim
I'm guessing, (the article doesn't say) that the "SS Hospital" was for the SS guards and other personnel there rather than the prisoners...
But even if that was the case, you raise an interesting point...
Re: This seems like a stretch, even for me
Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:37 pm
by Scooter
Oh shit, I missed that detail. Your interpretation makes sense.
But even so, medical care is by its very nature humanitarian regardless of who is the recipient of it. Extending the definition of a war crime to include medical care crosses a line, I think.
Re: This seems like a stretch, even for me
Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2016 10:44 pm
by Sue U
Well, that's pretty much what the trial is for. If his defense is that he didn't do anything that constituted a war crime, the trier of fact will have to make that determination.
I don't see anything wrong with putting Nazis on trial, no matter what their age.
ETA:
Hubert Z, whose last name is being withheld because of Germany’s privacy laws, was a sergeant in the Nazi SS at Auschwitz from October 1943 to January 1944. He acted as one of the death camp’s paramedics from 15 August to 14 September 1944.
During that month at least 14 deportation trains arrived at the extermination camp from as far away as Lyon, Vienna and Westerbork, in the Netherlands. Among the prisoners on the trains was the teenage diarist Anne Frank and her family, most of whom later perished in the camp’s gas chambers.
***
The former paramedic is not accused of having been directly involved in any killings, but the prosecution’s office holds that he was aware of the camp’s function as a facility for mass murder. By joining its organisational structure, he consciously participated and even accelerated the deaths of thousands of people, the prosecutors say.
German court rulings have established a precedent for the conviction of Nazi concentration camp employees for being guilty of accessory to murder. In July, 94-year-old Oskar Gröning, known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz”, was sentenced to four years in prison after he was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people in Auschwitz.
Two other cases involving death camp employees are pending trial in German courts. In the town of Detmold, Reinhold H is accused of being an accessory to the murder of 170,000 people in Auschwitz and has been deemed fit for trial. In the northern city of Kiel, a 91-year-old woman is accused of the same charges in the case of 260,000 people. In her case, the defence maintains that the accused is unfit for trial and a final court ruling on this is expected in early 2016.