The higher district court in the town of Hamm in Westphalia, West Germany, decided yesterday that it is very likely that Dutch war criminal Siert Bruins, who was arrested July 4 is now a German national and therefore cannot be extradited to Holland.
Bruins was sentenced in absentia to death by a special Dutch tribunal in April, 1949 for having personally killed, on one of the last days of the German occupation of Holland, Jews who had been discovered in their hiding places. He was recently discovered in West Germany where he has lived ever since May, 1945. The Hamm court took the view that by joining the Nazi SS during World War 11 Bruins was certified as a German national under a decree issued by Hitler in 1934.
For the time being, however, Bruins will not be released from detention but will be kept in preliminary detention pending an investigation to determine whether he committed war crimes in Germany as well. Johan van der Leeuw, of the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam, called the decision of the Hamm court surprising. Hitler’s decree, that those joining the 55 automatically received German nationality, has never been applied to Dutch nationals of Dutch origin who volunteered for the 55, as Bruins did.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
