Dementia too advanced for Auschwitz medic Hubert Z. to face trial say prosecutors
A 96-year-old former medic at Auschwitz concentration camp is too ill to face trial, prosecutors told a court on Thursday.
Hubert Z., had been charged with at least 3,681 counts of accessory to murder, but a medical expert advised the prosecution team that his dementia was too advanced for him to stand trial.
“The experts reached this conclusion after having diagnosed dementia in October 2015, leading to a determination that (the defendant) could only stand trial on a limited basis,” Stefan Urbanek, a spokesman for the regional prosecutor’s office, said in a statement.
“Now the dementia has reached a severity that the defendant is no longer able, inside and outside the courtroom, to reasonably assess his interests or coherently follow or give testimony.”
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Anne Frank was on-board one of 14 trains that arrived during Hubert Z.’s time at Auschwitz
His trial started in 2015, when he was deemed healthy enough to face court, but the case was temporarily suspended when the prosecution team accused judge Klaus Kabisch of a “lack of objectivity.”
The request for the case to be thrown out effectively ends any proceedings against the man, who was one of the last people at Auschwitz to be face trial. A court spokesman told AFP news agency that judges would approve the motion “in the short term.”
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The lawyer representing the sons of a woman murdered at Auschwitz, who were co-plaintiffs in the case, criticized the state’s handling of the case but acknowledged that the latest move “complied with the rule of law.”
Hubert Z. worked at the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland for one month of 1944 after joining the Waffen-SS at the age of 19. During his brief tenure, 14 trains full of Jews and other victims of the Holocaust arrived, including teenage diarist Anne Frank. Frank was transferred to Bergen-Belsen where she died just months before the camp was liberated by British troops.
aw/kms (AFP, dpa, epd)