Auschwitz medic Hubert Zafke goes on trial at fourth attempt

Zafke, who was given a medical check before the pre-trial hearing, was wheeled into Neubrandenburg state court and held a wooden cane.

Hubert Zafke was brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair by one of his sons for the trial, which had been postponed three times because of health concerns.

Some 1.1 million people, majority European Jews, perished between 1940 and 1945 in Auschwitz before it was liberated by Soviet forces.

Hubert Zafke sits in a courtroom ahead of his trial in Neubrandenburg, eastern Germany, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016.

Hubert Zafke, who until recently was known only as Hubert Z, was charged in a German court on Monday.

Zafke is accused of helping to run the horrific Auschwitz concentration camp during a one-month period in 1944 by putting prisoners into gas chambers, screening blood samples from women prisoners, and treating SS guard personnel.

Zafke denied those charges, arguing that he only treated wounded soldiers and members of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a paramilitary organization under Adolf Hilter and the National Socialist German Worker’s Party in Nazi Germany. Frank died later at Bergen-Belsen, and Zafke is not charged over her death.

The last surviving Nazis are all now in their nineties.

But a state court in the northern city of Kiel ruled on Friday that a 92-year-old woman, Helma M, was unfit to stand trial on charges of being accessory to 260,000 counts of murder.

In June, a 94-year-old former SS guard, Reinhold Hanning, was sentenced to five years in prison for complicity in the deaths of 170,000 Auschwitz prisoners between January 1943 and June 1944. She was the SS radio operator for the commandant at Auschwitz.