The trial of a 95-year-old former Auschwitz medic has been suspended after he was deemed unfit to go to court.

Hubert Zafke, a former SS medic who was stationed in Auschwitz in 1944 has been charged with being an accomplice to the murder of at least 3,681 people.

However, a doctor who examined Zafke on Sunday found him to have “suicidal thoughts and was suffering from stress reaction and hypertension”, prompting the judge to rule on Monday that he was “not in a state” to be transported to court or stand trial.

Prosecutors say that Zafke would have seen prisoners being sent to their deaths from where he was stationed - a path that led to the gas chambers. The charges against him focus on a month in 1944 - between August and September – when 14 trains arrived at Auschwitz. On one of these trains was Anne Frank who, along with her sister Margot, was later transported to Bergen-Belsen where they died in April 1945.

Zafke’s suitability for trial has been questioned since charges were first brought against him. An appeals court ruled against an original finding that he could not stand trial due to dementia. When he was first identified as a suspect last year, his son said: “My father is an elderly man. He has lived his life, so leave him in peace.”

Zafke’s trial comes at the same time as a number of other trials against former Nazi guards. Reinhold Hanning is currently being tried for accessory to murder on 170,000 counts. In September, a 91-year-old woman was charged with 260,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations she was a member of the Nazi SS who served in Auschwitz, while the so-called Bookkeeper of Auschwitz, Oscar Groening, was jailed last July for his role in 300,000 deaths.