German prosecutor Ulrich Maass got Heinrich Boere convicted for life this week. The trial against the former SS officer is the result of one of 20 ongoing inquiries regarding alleged WWII war criminals.

Ulrich Maass will retire this summer, but the last months of the German prosecutor’s working life are the busiest he has seen in a long time. Maass is in charge of the Zentralstelle für Nazi-Massenverbrechen (Centre for Nazi Mass Crimes) in Dortmund and was responsible for the prosecution of the Dutch SS officer Heinrich Boere, who was sentenced to life this week for the murder of three innocent Dutch civilians in 1944.

In an interview with NRC Handelsblad, Maass expressed his satisfaction over the court’s ruling. Parts of the verdict had been copied word-for-word from his closing argument. “Luckily, the time lies behind us when war criminals in Germany could exonerate themselves by arguing they were only following orders,” Maass said.

The Second World War ended 65 years ago, but some 20 investigations into the crimes of other possible war criminals are still ongoing in Dortmund. Last November, Maass pressed charges against a certain Adolf S. from Duisburg, who is accused of aiding in the execution of Jewish forced labourers in Austria during the final days of the war. The man was traced by an Austrian history student who found his name in the phone book. Doctors will now decide whether S. is fit to stand trial.

Maass is currently working “under a lot of pressure” on an inquiry into crimes committed by one Samuel K., who lives near Bonn. Last year, K. was heard as a witness in the case against John Demjanjuk in Munich. Like Demjanjuk, K. was a Trawniki: a prisoner of war taken from the Soviet Union Red Army, whom the Germans used to do their dirty work in the concentration camps. Even though K. had been questioned by law enforcement officials a number of times in the past, he had never been formally charged with anything.

K. served in the Belzec concentration camp in Poland and is thought to be complicit in the killing of 430,000 people. “We are working hard to put this case together,” Maass said. “But it requires investigations abroad, which take time. I hope that we will be able to press charges against K. this year.”

Each time Maass decides to prosecute someone for war crimes, he shows up on the suspect’s doorstep with a large group of people. “I have my colleague Andreas Brendel with me, five police officers and medical staff. A doctor ensures the suspect is capable of sitting through the interrogation,” Maass explained.

Such an interrogation can take days, Maass said. “But it can also be over quickly. Boere, for instance, refused to answer to the charges at all.”

Every year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem publishes a list of the ten most wanted Nazi criminals. On its 2009 list, Boere occupied sixth place. Dutchman Klaas Faber ranked one place higher. Faber, who now lives in the Bavarian town of Ingolstadt, was sentenced to death in the Netherlands after the war, but this was later commuted to life imprisonment. Like Boere, he was a member of the SS Feldmeijer death squad, and also part of the firing squad at the Dutch transit camp Westerbork. In 1952, Faber and a number of other war criminals managed to escape from a Dutch penitentiary and flee to Germany. No legal action has been taken against him since.

Maass looked into Faber’s crimes, but was unable to press charges. “I am responsible for cases in [the federal state of] North Rhine-Westphalia,” Maass explained. “My colleagues in Bavaria can choose who they want to prosecute at their own discretion. Had he lived in my state, I would gladly have prosecuted him.”

Maass did send Faber’s file to the Bavarian capital of Munich three years ago, but officials there declined to press charges against the Dutchman. A spokesperson for the prosecution there said the Boere verdict would not affect its decision.

nrc.nl