We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
A GERMAN COURT has today once again suspended the trial of a 95-year-old former medical orderly at the Auschwitz death camp, in a new setback for a case where a string of delays has sparked anger.
The latest halt marks the fifth time that the court case against Hubert Zafke has been put on hold since the first hearing in February because of concerns over his health.
Months into the attempt to prosecute him for at least 3,681 counts of accessory to murder, no evidence has been heard and the trial hangs by a thread.
Today, Zafke, sitting in a wheelchair, was brought by one of his four sons into the courtroom in the northeastern lakeside town of Neubrandenburg, where the hearing was once again focused on procedural issues.
Prosecutors put a motion for judge Klaus Kabisch to recuse himself, after a previous application by civil plaintiffs was rejected.
On the bench, the judge stifled a yawn as the prosecutors argued their case to get him replaced.
Prosecutors say that Kabisch is biased because he had been unwilling to start the trial in the first place due to Zafke’s poor health, before being overruled by a higher court.
Less than two hours later, without commenting on the new application against him, the judge adjourned the hearing without setting another court date.
The examination of the latest motion could take “three weeks”, he said.
‘Undignified’
Victims’ lawyers have grown increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress in the case.
“The co-plaintiffs have abandoned all hope that a trial that is anything other than a farce will actually start one day under this presiding judge,” their lawyers, Thomas Walther and Cornelius Nestler, said in a statement last week.
Over the last few hearings, a parade of doctors have been quizzed in court about Zafke’s mental health, with each reaching a different conclusion.
The hearings have taken a sometimes farcical tack, delving into his life in a rural village: Does he sometimes forget to feed his cats? Did he give his sheep too much to eat?
“While judges and experts review his daily life, the prosecutors stare into space,” said newspaper Die Welt.
The International Auschwitz Committee, a group representing camp survivors, has also sharply attacked Germany’s handling of the case, saying the court was hurtling “between sloppy ignorance and complete disinterest” in a resolution.
“The justice system has rarely offered a spectacle that is so undignified,” influential news weekly Der Spiegel wrote, noting the sharp contrast with the previous three trials of SS personnel.
Anne Frank’s train
The wisened Zafke is the fourth former concentration camp worker in the dock in this latest series of trials for Nazi-era crimes, following John Demjanjuk in 2011, Oskar Groening in 2015 and Reinhold Hanning this May – all convicted before solemn, packed courtrooms of complicity in mass murder.
Those cases were hailed for providing a degree of catharsis for aged survivors, even if they shed little new light on the known facts of the Holocaust.
The Demjanjuk case set the legal precedent that defendants could be sentenced for having worked at concentration camps where atrocities were committed without proof of specific crimes by them.
The charges against Zafke focus on a one-month period in 1944 when 14 trains carrying prisoners – including the teenage diarist Anne Frank – arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Frank, who arrived in Auschwitz with her parents and sister, was later transferred to another camp, Bergen-Belsen, where she died in March 1945, just two months before the Nazis were defeated.
Prosecutors have said Zafke was aware that the site in Nazi-occupied Poland was an extermination camp.
As the proceedings have stalled, a media war has gathered pace, with a lawyer for Zafke, Peter-Michael Diestel, blasting a “humanely troubling” and “politically dubious” effort to convict his client.
“I consider it extremely distressing that the German justice system, which has only spottily addressed the Holocaust, is trying to create a fig leaf for itself with this kind of trial,” he said in February.
More than 70 years after the prosecution of top Nazis began in Nuremberg, Germany is racing against time to try the last Third Reich criminals.
Some 1.1 million people, most of them European Jews, perished between 1940 and 1945 in Auschwitz before it was liberated by Soviet forces.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Sorry I have already sent all my money to a Nigerian prince, I know i shouldnt have put all my eggs in one basket.
Yes.
Mrs Shal , you’ve come back out of retirement !!
Baby, is that really you?? My heart sings :-D
HACK ATM AND BECOME RICH TODAY!!!!
Hello everyone. There is a new way of making cash, although it is illegal but also a smart and easy way of living big. I used to be a barrack girl until i became eager and decided to change my life one way or the other. I got opportunity to register for the militant amnesty through connection thereby taking me out of the country for training in the United States for a period of 3years. To cut the story short, during my training i made some white friends who were geeks and also experts at ATM repairs, programming and execution who taught me various tips and tricks about breaking into an ATM. with my knowledge gained from my white geek friends, i have been able to counterfeit and programme a blank ATM card using various tools and software’s. I have ready-made programmed ATM cards; I am just 29, my family are in USA and i have cash, i have a car, i live in malaysia and i travel all around the world. i do my things on a low-key to avoid suspicion. Some of you will wonder why i am selling this out if truly i am already living large. It is because it is hard task doing it yourself, i wont lie to you, its not easy to hack ATM talk more of to reprogramme the card alone and be able to get 40,000 Kuwaiti dinar each day. It takes days and sometimes weeks. Some of you will want the ready made card to avoid the stress of doing it yourself and i don’t give the ready made card out for free because i spent days trying to make it available for you. on yahoomail, (luciafernando222@gmail.com) for request of the ATM NOTE: the ATM card has no pin, no registered account number. It has no limit for withdrawal and it is untraceable.(luciafernando222@gmail.com)
Use precise geolocation data. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Store and/or access information on a device. Personalised advertising and content, advertising and content measurement, audience research and services development.
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work.
These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then these services may not function properly.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not be able to monitor our performance.
Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times an ad is presented to you).
Information about your activity on this service (such as forms you submit, content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (for example, information from your previous activity on this service and other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (that might include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present advertising that appears more relevant based on your possible interests by this and other entities.
Advertising presented to you on this service can be based on your advertising profiles, which can reflect your activity on this service or other websites or apps (like the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects.
Information about your activity on this service (for instance, forms you submit, non-advertising content you look at) can be stored and combined with other information about you (such as your previous activity on this service or other websites or apps) or similar users. This is then used to build or improve a profile about you (which might for example include possible interests and personal aspects). Your profile can be used (also later) to present content that appears more relevant based on your possible interests, such as by adapting the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find content that matches your interests.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on your content personalisation profiles, which can reflect your activity on this or other services (for instance, the forms you submit, content you look at), possible interests and personal aspects. This can for example be used to adapt the order in which content is shown to you, so that it is even easier for you to find (non-advertising) content that matches your interests.
Information regarding which advertising is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine how well an advert has worked for you or other users and whether the goals of the advertising were reached. For instance, whether you saw an ad, whether you clicked on it, whether it led you to buy a product or visit a website, etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of advertising campaigns.
Information regarding which content is presented to you and how you interact with it can be used to determine whether the (non-advertising) content e.g. reached its intended audience and matched your interests. For instance, whether you read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast or look at a product description, how long you spent on this service and the web pages you visit etc. This is very helpful to understand the relevance of (non-advertising) content that is shown to you.
Reports can be generated based on the combination of data sets (like user profiles, statistics, market research, analytics data) regarding your interactions and those of other users with advertising or (non-advertising) content to identify common characteristics (for instance, to determine which target audiences are more receptive to an ad campaign or to certain contents).
Information about your activity on this service, such as your interaction with ads or content, can be very helpful to improve products and services and to build new products and services based on user interactions, the type of audience, etc. This specific purpose does not include the development or improvement of user profiles and identifiers.
Content presented to you on this service can be based on limited data, such as the website or app you are using, your non-precise location, your device type, or which content you are (or have been) interacting with (for example, to limit the number of times a video or an article is presented to you).
With your acceptance, your precise location (within a radius of less than 500 metres) may be used in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
With your acceptance, certain characteristics specific to your device might be requested and used to distinguish it from other devices (such as the installed fonts or plugins, the resolution of your screen) in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
Your data can be used to monitor for and prevent unusual and possibly fraudulent activity (for example, regarding advertising, ad clicks by bots), and ensure systems and processes work properly and securely. It can also be used to correct any problems you, the publisher or the advertiser may encounter in the delivery of content and ads and in your interaction with them.
Certain information (like an IP address or device capabilities) is used to ensure the technical compatibility of the content or advertising, and to facilitate the transmission of the content or ad to your device.
Information about your activity on this service may be matched and combined with other information relating to you and originating from various sources (for instance your activity on a separate online service, your use of a loyalty card in-store, or your answers to a survey), in support of the purposes explained in this notice.
In support of the purposes explained in this notice, your device might be considered as likely linked to other devices that belong to you or your household (for instance because you are logged in to the same service on both your phone and your computer, or because you may use the same Internet connection on both devices).
Your device might be distinguished from other devices based on information it automatically sends when accessing the Internet (for instance, the IP address of your Internet connection or the type of browser you are using) in support of the purposes exposed in this notice.
The choices you make regarding the purposes and entities listed in this notice are saved and made available to those entities in the form of digital signals (such as a string of characters). This is necessary in order to enable both this service and those entities to respect such choices.
have your say