Auschwitz Medic, 95, Will Stand Trial

Hubert Zafke was there when train carrying Anne Frank arrived
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 19, 2016 2:56 AM CST
Auschwitz Medic, 95, Will Stand Trial
This January 1941 photo shows the entrance to the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland.   (AP Photo/File)

A 95-year-old German man accused of serving as a medical orderly in a place where more than a million people were murdered will go on trial next month, a court has announced. According to an indictment, former SS sergeant Hubert Zafke was a paramedic at the Auschwitz extermination camp from Aug. 15 to Sept. 14, 1944, making him an accessory to at least 3,681 murders, the BBC reports. During that time, at least 14 trains carrying deported Jews arrived at the Auschwitz complex, including one from the Netherlands carrying Anne Frank and her family, reports Reuters. Frank—at 15, just old enough to avoid being sent to the gas chambers automatically—was imprisoned at the camp before being sent to Bergen-Belsen, where she died in early 1945.

Last month, a court ruled that Zafke was fit to stand trial, although the next hearing, scheduled for Feb. 29, will assess his health and the conditions under which he can stand trial, reports Reuters. Prosecutors say that while he may not have directly taken part in any murders, he was aware that he was serving at "an industrial-scale mass murder site." Zafke "lent support to the organization of the camp and was thereby both involved in and advanced the extermination," prosecutors said in a statement, per Deutsche Welle. (Last year, the "accountant of Auschwitz" was found guilty and received a four-year sentence.)

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