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In what may lead to Germany's last Nazi war crimes trial, a state prosecutor
in the city of Dortmund plans to indict a former member
of Hitler's SS for murdering three unarmed Dutch civilians
in 1944. But the defendant, 86-year-old Heinrich Boere,
may escape prosecution yet again.
A German public prosecutor is preparing to file charges this week against an
86-year-old former SS soldier accused of killing three
people in the Netherlands in 1944. If the case comes
to trial it could be the last war crimes trial to take
place in Germany.
Heinrich Boere shot dead three unarmed Dutch civilians between July and September
1944 when he was part of an SS hit squad that killed
dozens of people in reprisals for attacks on Dutch Nazis
by resistance fighters.
He confessed to the killings
after he was captured by US forces at the end of World
War II but he escaped from his prison camp and fled to
Germany before he could be put on trial.
A Dutch court sentenced him
to death in absentia in 1949 but legal loopholes, extradition
hurdles and disagreement over the nature of his crimes
enabled him to escape justice to this day.
Now Boere, born of a Dutch
father and a German mother, may become the last person
to be put on trial in Germany for Nazi war crimes.
Ulrich Maass, senior state
prosector in the Dortmund public prosecutor's office,
told SPIEGEL ONLINE that he would file the charges with
a German court this week, beginning legal proceedings
that could lead to a trial. "It will take some time," possibly months, Maass said, because a court will need to determine whether
Boere at 86 is still fit to stand trial.
"I interviewed
him on March 11 and it's my impression that nothing stands
in the way of this coming to trial, although my opinion
isn't relevant here, the decision will depend on the
testimony of other people such as medical experts," said Maass.
"I can't take any
account of his age," said Maass, who specializes in hunting Nazi war criminals. "There is no statue of limitations for murder. According to my interpretation
of the law I will continue to pursue any case that is
unatoned."
Boere's lawyer has so far
not made any claim that his client is unfit to stand
trial, although he may yet do so, Maass said.
Never Too Old to Face Justice
Last year authorities in Germany
failed to obtain any convictions or file any indictments
of war criminals, prompting criticism from the director
of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, Efraim Zuroff.
The argument that Nazi war
criminals are now too old to stand trial isn't acceptable,
Zuroff, whose campaign "Operation Last Chance" aims to bring surviving perpetrators to justice, told SPIEGEL ONLINE in an interview
in January.
"The passage of
time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrator.
If we were to set a chronological limit on prosecution
we would be saying that you could get away with genocide,
which is morally outrageous," said Zuroff.
He launched his campaign in
Europe in 2002 and extended it last year to South America,
where many Nazis fled after the war.
Operation Last Chance started
targeting the hundreds if not thousands of surviving
lower-level officials, guards and soldiers who committed
war crimes.
Such people are more likely
still to be alive than the higher-ranking Nazis who have
never been brought to justice such as Austrian SS medic
Aribert Heim, also known as Doctor Death, who would now
be 93 and who conducted gruesome medical experiments
on concentration camp inmates.
'I Pray for the Dead'
Maass said Boere took part
in an SS operation codenamed "Silbertanne" or "Silver Pine" which killed 54 civilians in retaliation for the killing of prominent Dutch
Nazis by Dutch resistance fighters.
"They were citizens
who had a certain standing in civilian life, who were
opposed to the German occupation and who were suspected
of being part of the resistance," said Maass.
Dutch-born Boere, who now
lives in an apartment complex for retired people in the
western town of Eschweiler, could not be reached for
comment on Monday. He told SPIEGEL ONLINE last August: "I'm not interested in what happened back then. I'm alone, don't have much longer
to live and am just waiting to die."
He joined the Waffen-SS, the
elite military arm of Hitler's murderous SS organization,
in 1940 and served on the Eastern Front for two years
before returning to occupied Holland to join the 15-strong
hit squad "Special Command Feldmeijer" in 1942.
His job was to help eradicate
the Dutch resistance by shooting civilians deemed to
be sympathetic to it. "We didn't know the men," Boere told SPEGEL ONLINE last August. "The security service of the SS gave us the name and off we went."
According to Dutch and German
court documents, he and a companion shot dead a pharmacist,
a bicycle dealer and another civilian.
In the case of the pharmacist
Fritz Bicknese, Boere and a companion -- both dressed
in civilian clothes -- walked into his drugstore in the
town of Breda on July 14, 1944, asked him his name and
then opened fire. Bicknese bled to death on the floor.
Boere admits that he was a "fanatic" at
the time. "I'm sorry about what happened in 1944. I pray for the dead every night and for
everyone who died in the war." He said he only realized after the war that he had believed in "total nonsense."
Protected by Law
Boere worked as a miner in
Germany after the war and has repeatedly managed to avoid
jail.
A Dutch court applied for
his extradition in 1980 but the request was denied because
of uncertainty about whether he had acquired German citizenship
by joining the SS. German law prohibits German citizens
from being extradited.
At the same time an investigation
into him by German prosecutors collapsed because wartime
reprisal operations such as his were deemed to be in
line with international rules of engagement.
But legal proceedings against
him continued and a German court in Aachen ruled that
he should serve his original Dutch sentence -- now commuted
to a life term -- in a German prison.
However, a higher court last
year accepted Boere's appeal against the ruling because
he had not been allocated a defense lawyer in the 1949
trial, rendering the verdict null and void because the
trial had not met international standards.
Now prosecutor Maass believes
he has enough evidence to bring Boere to trial again. "I have one witness, all the others are dead."
He added that Boere's case
might not be the last. "We'll probably still file indictments in one case or another."
spiegel.de
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