AACHEN,
Germany — A German court on Tuesday convicted an 88-year-old
of murdering three Dutch civilians as part of a Nazi hit
squad during World War II, capping six decades of efforts
to bring the former Waffen SS man to justice.
Heinrich Boere, number six on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's
list of most-wanted Nazis, was given the maximum sentence
of life in prison for the 1944 killings.
"These were murders that could hardly be outdone in
terms of baseness and cowardice — beyond the respectability
of any soldier," presiding judge Gerd Nohl said.
Boere sat in his wheelchair, staring at the floor and showing
no visible reaction as the verdict was announced.
For Dolf Bicknese, it was the first time he had seen in
person the man who killed his father in 1944 — but
he said he felt little emotion staring Boere in the face.
"The person hardly interests me any more," the
73-year-old told The Associated Press. "My interest
is justice."
During the trial, which began in October, Boere admitted
killing a bicycle-shop owner; Bicknese's father, a pharmacist;
and another civilian as a member of the "Silbertanne" hit
squad — a unit of largely Dutch SS volunteers responsible
for reprisal killings of countrymen who were considered anti-German.
He said he had no choice but to follow orders to carry out
the killings.
"As a simple soldier, I learned to carry out orders," Boere
testified in December.
"And I knew that if I didn't carry out my orders I
would be breaking my oath and would be shot myself."
But the prosecution argued that Boere was a willing member
of the fanatical Waffen SS, which he joined shortly after
the Nazis overran his hometown of Maastricht and the rest
of the Netherlands in 1940.
Judge Nohl noted that there was no evidence Boere ever even
tried to question his orders.
He characterized the murders as hit-style slayings, with
Boere and his accomplices dressed in civilian clothes and
surprising their victims at their homes or places of work
late at night or early in the morning.
"The victims had no real chance," Nohl said.
Though sentenced to death in absentia in the Netherlands
in 1949, later commuted to life imprisonment, Boere has managed
to avoid jail until now.
One German court refused to extradite him because it ruled
he might have German nationality as well as Dutch. Another
would not force him to serve his Dutch sentence in a German
prison because he was absent from his trial, having fled
to Germany.
"We welcome the conviction, we welcome the sentence
and this is again another proof that even at this point it
is possible to bring Nazi war criminals to justice," Efraim
Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
said by telephone from Jerusalem.
"It also underscores the significance of the renewed
activity on the part of the German prosecution," he
said.
Defense lawyer Gordon Christiansen said he would appeal
to a German federal court. Boere will remain free until the
appeals process is complete — and that could take two
to three years if it goes to the European Court of Human
Rights, Christiansen said.
Teun de Groot, whose father of the same name was the bicycle-shop
owner killed by Boere, said it was "a shame" Boere
would not be imprisoned immediately but was happy nonetheless.
"The verdict here is good," the 77-year-old said.
Boere was born in Eschweiler, Germany — on the outskirts
of Aachen, where he lives today. The son of a Dutch man and
a German woman, he moved to the Netherlands when he was an
infant.
Boere has testified that he decided to join the SS as an
18-year-old after the Germans had overrun the Netherlands
and he saw a recruiting poster signed by Heinrich Himmler
that inspired him.
After fighting on the Russian front, Boere ended up back
in the Netherlands as part of "Silbertanne" — a
death squad believed to be responsible for 54 killings in
Holland.
According to statements Boere made to Dutch authorities
after the war, he and a fellow SS man were given a list of
names slated for "retaliatory measures."
Their first target was the pharmacist, Fritz Hubert Ernst
Bicknese.
The two walked into the pharmacy and asked the man there
if he was Bicknese. When he answered "yes," Boere
pulled his pistol from his right coat pocket and fired two
or three shots into Bicknese's upper body.
The next victim followed a similar pattern: Boere and an
accomplice shot the bicycle-shop owner, Teun de Groot, when
he answered the doorbell at his home in the town of Voorschoten.
They then continued to the apartment of the third victim,
Franz Wilhelm Kusters, and forced him into their car. They
drove him to another town, stopped on the pretense of having
a flat tire and shot him.
"Kusters fell against the garden door ... and sank
to the ground," Boere told investigators. "Blood
shot out of Kusters' neck."
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