BERLIN, Reuters, Jan 18, 2016 – A 95-year-old former paramedic at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz will go on trial in Germany next month on charges of being an accessory to the murder of at least 3,681 people a German court announced on Monday.
Hubert Z., whose last name is being withheld because of Germany’s privacy laws, was a sergeant in the Nazi SS at Auschwitz from October 1943 to January 1944. He acted as one of the death camp’s paramedics from Aug. 15 to Sept. 14, 1944.
Although the former paramedic is not accused of having been directly involved in any killings, the prosecution’s office holds that he was aware of the camp’s function as a facility for mass murder. By joining its organizational structure, he consciously participated and even accelerated the deaths of thousands of people, the prosecutors say.
German court rulings have established a precedent for the conviction of Nazi concentration camp employees for being guilty of accessory to murder.