Former SS Man Goes on Trial in Germany for War Crimes

A trial has begun in Aachen, Germany of a former member of Hitler's Waffen-SS who is accused of murdering three Dutch civilians during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

Heinrich Boere, 88, has already been found guilty by a court in the Netherlands in 1949, for the murders of Fritz Bicknesse, Teun de Groot and Frans Kusters but as the Guardian reports German authorities have refused to extradite him to the Netherlands to serve a life sentence or force him to serve that sentence in Germany. Boere, the 18-year-old son of a Dutch father and German mother and living in the Dutch town of Maastricht when the Nazis arrived in 1940, had initially been sentenced to death, in absentia, for the murders of the civilians but that sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. There would seem to be little doubt that Boere, who joined the SS in the same year that German forces invaded the Netherlands, is guilty of the crimes for which he is finally standing trial in person. He had reportedly confessed to the murders, that were committed sometime between September 1943 and September 1944, when Boere was a member of SS Sonderkommando Feldmeijer, which killed civilians in retaliation for the activities of the Dutch resistance, to Dutch authorities after the war. Boere then escaped to Germany, where he has remained, safe from extradition because of the German citizenship he enjoys through his mother. Germany has a policy of not extraditing its own citizens. Just as it seemed Boere, who supposedly became inured to violence during his two years fighting against the Russians whilst serving with an SS division on the Eastern Front, would escape justice for his self-confessed crimes he was tracked down, in 2000, by a Dutch filmmaker and admitted on camera that he felt no guilt for what he did, adding "That's why I have always made sure they couldn't catch me". Ulrich Maass, a German state prosecutor from the city of Dortmund and Nazi hunter, set his sights on finally bring Boere to justice and was at first successful, Spiegel reporting that the court in Aachen agreed to adopt the ruling made by the Dutch court in 1949. However an appeals court in Cologne overturned the decision of the Aachen court on a technicality. At the beginning of 2009 Maass was foiled again in his efforts to make Boere pay for the crimes he committed over 60 years ago when the court in Aachen ruled that the former SS man was not physically able to go on trial. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karslruhe disagreed with that assessment and so Boere's trial finally began on Wednesday. Maass wants to see Boere spend the rest of his life in jail. To fulfill that wish he must prove that the Dutchman cum German, according to the Guardian Boere is the sixth most-wanted person on the list of Nazi suspects compiled by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, committed his crimes through malice and would not have had his own life threatened had he refused to kill his fellow Dutch citizens. A new problem did emerge for Maass on the first day of the trial when defense lawyers claimed that he should be removed from the case as he lacks objectivity. Therefore, after just one and a half hours of the proceedings the judge decided on an adjournment until Monday to consider the argument presented by the defense. Protesters holding banners with messages such as "No peace for Nazi criminals" and "Don't forgive, don't forget" stood outside the court in Aachen and shouts of "Nazis out, no fascists here" were heard inside the court. Also in court was the son of one of Boere's victims, Teun de Groot. Under German law, says Spiegel, relatives of victims of war criminals are permitted to be co-plaintiffs at an alleged perpetrator's trial and can enter evidence and ask the accused questions. One person rather cynical when it comes to the German authorities' recent efforts to bring the likes of Boere and John Demjanjuk to trial is historian Stephan Stracke. He noted:

Now that there are only a few them left they are suddenly being put on trial. If they had done this 10 years ago it could have been hundreds. Those old Nazis have long been protected by friends in high places. Now they are finally gone, but a lot of people have escaped justice because of them. At least Boere will get what he deserves