A German appeals court has cleared the way for the trial of a 95-year-old man accused of being an accessory to the murder of at least 3,681 people at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp.

The higher court of Rostock in northern Germany deemed Hubert Z fit for trial, reversing a decision by a lower court that considered him too fragile for a legal process.

Z, whose last name is confidential due to German privacy laws, was an SS sergeant at Auschwitz in south-west Poland from October 1943 to January 1944 and acted as one of the camp’s paramedics from 15 August to 14 September 1944, the indictment said.

During that month, at least 14 deportation trains reached the extermination site from as far as Rhodes, Lyon, Vienna and Westerbork in the Netherlands, the prosecutor’s office in Schwerin said.

Although Z, who is German, is not accused of having been directly involved in any killings, the prosecution’s office says he was aware of the camp’s function and by joining its organisational structure consciously participated and even accelerated the deaths of thousands of people.

“Given his awareness, the accused lent support to the organisation of the camp and was thereby both involved in and promoted the extermination,” said prosecutors in an earlier statement as they charged Z for complicity in the “cruel and insidious killings of at least 3,681” people.



German court rulings have established a precedent for the conviction of Nazi concentration camp employees for being guilty of accessory to murder.

In July, 94-year-old Oskar Gröning, the so-called bookkeeper of Auschwitz, was sentenced to four years in prison after he was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people in Auschwitz.

Two other cases involving death camp employees are pending trial in German courts. In the town of Detmold, Reinhold H is accused of being an accessory to the murder of 170,000 people in Auschwitz, and in the northern city of Kiel, a 91-year-old woman is accused of the same charges in the case of 260,000 people.

In both cases, the defence maintains the accused are unfit for trial. Final court rulings are expected this month and in early 2016.

Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, responsible for war crime investigations at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said: “You would expect that, considering the age of the accused, every effort would be made to expedite these cases, but instead they all follow a lengthy process. But better late than never.”