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Serious question
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What is the point of trying a 95-year-old doctor who spent several weeks treating the guards at Auschwitz?
I appreciate that carrying out an illegal order is illegal, but what does this trial possibly achieve? My understanding (World Service) is that there used to be a policy of only bringing charges against actual decision makers but that in recent years anyone possibly complicit in Nazi atrocities has been brought to trial: is it just that they're running out of cases, or is there an actual reason?
(I thought the same thing a previous case, of a guard who was sentenced, at the age of 93, to prison largely on the basis of interviews he had given to media organisations to counter Holocaust deniers, but this one seems -- as it involves a medic who is mentally ill -- to be even more unreasonable. I am happy to be explained to, but not to be shouted at.)
What is the point of trying a 95-year-old doctor who spent several weeks treating the guards at Auschwitz?
I appreciate that carrying out an illegal order is illegal, but what does this trial possibly achieve? My understanding (World Service) is that there used to be a policy of only bringing charges against actual decision makers but that in recent years anyone possibly complicit in Nazi atrocities has been brought to trial: is it just that they're running out of cases, or is there an actual reason?
(I thought the same thing a previous case, of a guard who was sentenced, at the age of 93, to prison largely on the basis of interviews he had given to media organisations to counter Holocaust deniers, but this one seems -- as it involves a medic who is mentally ill -- to be even more unreasonable. I am happy to be explained to, but not to be shouted at.)
no subject
"Mr Zafke is the third former Nazi who served at Auschwitz to be brought to trial in his 90s in a last attempt by a team of activist lawyers to hold rank-and-file SS soldiers to account for the Holocaust. Their aim is to establish in German case law that serving at Auschwitz in any role is sufficient grounds for a conviction of accessory to murder."
So in part it seems to be an attempt to establish a precedent in law. If that's right, I assume it means the complicity net would be wider for any similar cases in the future. (Unless such a precedent will only apply to the Holocaust, but that seems unlikely.)