Nazi crimes: Auschwitz Committee accuses the judiciary of decades of failure

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Concentration camp in Stutthof near Danzig (archive image)

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Piotr Wittman / dpa

The International Auschwitz Committee has accused the German judiciary of failing to prosecute Nazi criminals for decades.

"The survivors, who are now all very old, have waited their entire lives for the perpetrators to be called to account," said Christoph Heubner, executive vice-president of the committee, to the newspapers of the Funke media group.

The committee is an association of Auschwitz survivors and their organizations.

It includes organizations, foundations and Holocaust survivors from 19 countries.

The reason for the criticism are two current charges that are currently being examined: at the Itzehoe regional court against a 95-year-old former secretary of the Stutthof concentration camp and at the Neuruppin regional court against a 100-year-old former security guard from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

"That this is only happening now," said Heubner, was "a failure and neglect of the German judiciary that has spanned decades."

Knowing that the perpetrators from the camps mostly could have lived their lives unmolested and safe, "without having to give an account of their crimes in front of a German court, the survivors weighed their entire lives," said Heubner.

They are not about revenge, but about justice - and that has no expiration date.

Therefore, these processes are still important, even if the perpetrators and surviving victims have now reached a great age.

In the meantime, the view has gained acceptance in German case law that every person who served in "the murder system and machinery" of a German extermination camp was also jointly responsible for the "humiliation, torture and murder of the prisoners."

The accused former secretary and the accused former security guard were also part of this mechanism, said Heubner.

The public prosecutor's offices in Neuruppin and Itzehoe had been investigating for several years until the two charges were brought up in late January and early February.

For the survivors, it seems "almost bizarre that these trials take place at a time when the new Nazis are again calling for hatred and glorifying what happened in the camps," said Heubner.

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wit / dpa / AFP