German court rejects bias claims in Auschwitz medic trial
Prosecutors and attorneys representing death camp victims have claimed judges are uninterested in advancing Hubert Zafke's case
BERLIN — A German court has rejected calls to remove judges presiding over the trial of a former SS medic who served at the Auschwitz death camp.
Neubrandenburg state court spokesman Christian Deutsch said Friday the complaints alleging bias, filed by prosecutors and attorneys representing Auschwitz victims and their families, had been rejected. He says the court found no grounds to question the impartiality of the judges.
The trial of Hubert Zafke has been repeatedly postponed after judges ruled the 95-year-old was unfit. It finally started in September, but because of the gap between sessions, due to the bias complaints, it will have to be restarted.
Zafke is charged with 3,681 counts of accessory to murder for allegedly helping the Nazi camp function. His attorney says he did nothing criminal.
Prosecutors, and civil plaintiffs, had launched motions of bias against the judges, charging that they were unwilling to try wheelchair-bound Zafke.
The case has been marred by five delays and at times deteriorated into farce, increasingly frustrating victims’ lawyers.
The hearings have delved into Zafke’s 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.
Victims’ lawyers have grown increasingly frustrated.
“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 attorneys, Thomas Walther and Cornelius Nestler, said in a statement in September.
Both the state and the victims have tried twice to have the judge, Klaus Kabisch, recuse himself. They argued 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.
“The justice system has rarely offered a spectacle that is so undignified,” influential news weekly Der Spiegel wrote.