(JTA)
-- A former Nazi SS officer died in Germany two months after
the reopening of an investigation into his connection to
massacres of Jews.
Erich Steidtmann, who as commander was accused of leading several Nazi police
battalions who participated in the mass murder of Jews in
Eastern Europe, died this week in Hanover, where he lived.
He was 95.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center released
a statement Tuesday expressing frustration that Steidtmann
was never prosecuted for his crimes, saying it reflected
decades of German judicial failure in the case.
“Had the prosecutors done their job
properly in the sixties, he would not have escaped justice,”
said Efraim Zuroff, the center's Israel director.
The case was reopened in April based
on a letter that Steidtmann wrote in October 1943 that would
have placed him in the area of the massacres at the time
they occurred rather than at home on leave, as he told prosecutors
during investigations in the 1960s, according to The Associated
Press.
The case closed quickly for lack of
evidence.
“It was only thanks to research by
the Wiesenthal Center’s Dr. Stefan Klemp and the Sueddeutsche
Zeitung Magazine that the case against Steidtmann was reopened," Zuroff said, "but unfortunately it will never come to court, nor will Steidtmann ever be punished.”
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