Dutch Killer of Anti-Nazi Resistance Fighters Dies in Jail at 92
A 92-year-old Dutch former member of a Nazi death squad who lived unpunished in Germany for decades until his conviction in 2010 died on Sunday of natural causes in a German prison, justice officials said on Monday.
Heinrich Boere, once high on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most wanted crime suspects, was convicted in 2010 in one of Germany’s last Nazi trials of killing three Dutch civilians in 1944 as an Waffen SS squad member targeting anti-Nazi resistance fighters. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Boere, who was unrepentant during his six-month trial in Aachen and said he was only following orders, had lived a quiet life in Germany after World War Two even though he was a wanted man in the Netherlands.
Boere was captured by U.S. forces in the Netherlands after the war and confessed to killing the three civilians: a chemist in Breda, a bicycle seller and another man in Voorschoten.
But he escaped in 1947 and fled to Germany before being sentenced to death in absentia in the Netherlands in 1949.
A German court refused a Dutch request for Boere’s extradition in 1980, only to indict him 28 years later.
Germany has sought to prosecute the last surviving war crime suspects and improve its patchy post-war record of bringing former Nazis to justice.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
