A 95-year-old former SS medic will go on trial on Monday charged with being an accomplice in the murders of over 3,600 people at Auschwitz. Hubert Zafke was present at the camp during the time of Anne Frank, the famous writer of a diary which became one of the most well known depictions of life under Nazi rule.
According to prosecutors, Zafke was stationed on a path leading to the gas chambers and would have seen groups of prisoners being led to their murders. He also would have seen smoke rising from the crematoriums, and thus had some idea of what was happening.
His trial is the latest in a series of trials aimed at prosecuting all of those involved in the atrocities of the Holocaust. Despite the age of those being charged, prosecutors have successfully brought to justice death camp guards, such as John Demanjuk, and others involved in the process, such as Oskar Groning, the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz.”
The trial will focus on the period between August and September 1944, when 14 trains filled with Jews arrived at Auschwitz, one of them containing Anne Frank and her sister Margot. The two were later transported to Bergen-Belsen, where they likely died of typhus.
Zafke reportedly claims that he could have done nothing to stop the mass murders occurring.
