Two Dutch reporters have been ordered to appear in a German court this week, following a complaint from a 90-year-old convicted Nazi war criminal who claims that the journalists violated his privacy by using a hidden camera to record an interview with him.

The reporters, Jelle Visser and Jan Ponsen, claim that they were serving the public interest by recording their conversation with the elderly man, Heinrich Boere, who volunteered for the Waffen SS in 1941 when the Nazis invaded his native Holland and later murdered at least three Dutch civilians before fleeing to Germany after the war.

By the time the journalists tracked him down, in 2009, Mr. Boere had managed to escape prosecution for five decades, but he was subsequently tried in a German court and began serving a life sentence last year. Despite his guilt, however, authorities in the German town of Eschweiler decided to pursue a case against the journalists, and their trial is scheduled to begin on Thursday.

In a Skype interview with The Lede last week, Mr. Visser called the decision to charge him with a crime “bizarre” and explained that he and Mr. Ponsen could face up to three years in jail if convicted.

The two men have the full support of their editors at the Dutch public television program “Een Vandaag,” which broadcast the original report on Mr. Boere. That report, which began with the reporters knocking on Mr. Boere’s door in the nursing home in Germany where he lived before going to jail, remains on the program’s Web site.

Although the video report is not subtitled, it is not necessary to speak Dutch to get a sense of the conversation for which the journalists are now on trial.

The privacy case is complicated by the fact that the video clearly shows that Mr. Boere initially said he did not want to speak to Mr. Visser, who identified himself as a reporter, but then did answer some very searching questions. Mr. Visser told The Lede that Mr. Boere probably decided to speak to him because he had few visitors in the nursing home.

Mr. Visser also provided The Lede with the following English translation of their conversation:

Jelle Visser: Good afternoon Mr. Boere, I’m a reporter –

Heinrich Boere: I don’t want anything to do with reporters. Get out!

Jelle Visser: Do you feel sorry for what you did?

Heinrich Boere: Yes, yes, I was a fool. But I was a soldier. I had to do it. An order is an order. And otherwise I would have been killed. We were stuck.

Jelle Visser: Didn’t you know that the victims were innocent?

Heinrich Boere: What? Which men?

Jelle Visser: The victims.

Heinrich Boere: Pfff … (a dismissive hand gesture). I did anything they told me to do. They drilled us during SS boot camp; we didn’t know what we were doing. They made us crazy and we did what they want us to do.

Jelle Visser: Some say you are a war criminal.

Heinrich Boere: No … (a dismissive hand gesture).

Jelle Visser: Maybe you will have to go to jail.

Heinrich Boere: What?

Jelle Visser: Maybe you will have to go to jail.

Heinrich Boere: If I’m in jail or in here (a nursing home), when you’re as old as I am, it doesn’t matter. I heard they have television sets in jail. What else do I want? There’s nothing left here for me, this is also a jail.

thelede.blogs.nytimes.com