BERLIN (JTA) — A German court has ruled that another former Nazi SS officer is fit to stand trial for war crimes.
Tuesday’s decision by the regional high court in Cologne regarding Waffen-SS member Heinrich Boere, 88, comes shortly after a German Supreme Court decision that Nazi guard John Demjanjuk, 89, is fit to face charges of assisting in the murder of more than 29,000 Jews. His trial is expected to start in the fall.
Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said it was urgent to try Boere quickly, given his age. Boere is charged in the murders of three Dutch resistance fighters.
Boere told Focus magazine in April that it had been easy to shoot the three. He also said he was following orders.
"It was not difficult," he said in the interview. "You just had to bend a finger."
Boere, who had Dutch citizenship, fled to Germany and adopted German nationality after being found guilty in Holland. A death sentence ordered in absentia was later commuted to a life sentence. Germany could not legally extradite him nor have him serve the sentence in Germany.
Attempts to bring Boere to trial in Aachen, Germany, failed in 2008, after the court declared him unfit. The Cologne court reveresed the decision after reviewing reports from additional witnesses, including one from Boere’s nursing home.
According to news reports, there will be pauses in the trial, and a doctor will be present. The court also said that the trial was likely to be less stressful because Boere would not have to face many living witnesses.
His trial, and that of Demjanjuk, is among the last trials of alleged Nazi war criminals. Josef Scheungraber, 90, is now facing charges in a Munich court of having ordered the killings of 14 civilians in Italy in June 1944.
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