The Absurdity of an Auschwitz SS Medic Being Found Unfit for German Trial

© 2016 Peter Free

 

29 February 2016

 

 

Justice is a rare commodity

 

From the Associated Press:

 

 

The trial of a former SS medic on 3,681 counts of accessory to murder for allegedly helping the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp function appeared close to collapse Monday, after a doctor found the 95-year-old unfit to be transported to the court.

 

Presiding Judge Klaus Kabisch told the Neubrandenburg state court Monday that proceedings couldn't begin after a doctor on the weekend found Hubert Zafke was suffering from stress and high blood pressure, and had suicidal thoughts.

 

Kabisch said Zafke had told the doctor "I can't take it anymore, I'm at my end," and that "I want to be with mother." The judge said the latter was a reference to Zafke's wife, who died in 2011.

 

The trial's opening was postponed until the next session on March 14.

 

The charges against Zafke stem from a one-month period in 1944 and involve the deaths of Jews who arrived in 14 transports, including one that brought Anne Frank and her family to the camp. Frank died later at Bergen-Belsen.

 

Ahead of the trial, prosecutors and attorneys representing Jewish Auschwitz survivors who have joined the trial as co-plaintiffs . . . accused the Neubrandenburg judges of bias, but a motion to have them replaced was rejected.

 

Cornelius Nestler, who represents two brothers from Colorado who survived Auschwitz as young boys but lost both their parents, said . . . . "This court over the last months have shown that it is not interested in this going to trial at all.”

 

© 2016 David Rising, Trial of former SS medic at Auschwitz verging on collapse, Associated Press (29 February 2016)

 

 

Germany evidently let this guy prance around until he was 95 to prosecute him

 

Now, the judiciary claims that the “poor” killer is too sick to sit in court. Because, you know, that would trample on his rights.

 

 

The moral? — No wonder people increasingly disrespect government

 

Perspective in this case should have favored the thousands murdered, rather than their "alleged" SS killer. In a war crimes context, this principle is obvious to anyone with a reasonably flexible and justice-oriented mind.

 

Perhaps Judge Kabisch thinks that there should be an expiration date on state-sponsored genocide. If its perpetrators grow happily elderly enough, they can skate from accountability.