Family of SS killer's victims watch him stand trial

An 88-year-old former Waffen SS fanatic went on trial today accused of the wartime execution of three civilians in the Netherlands.

Heinrich Boere admitted the killings to Dutch authorities when he was in captivity after the war but managed to avoid prosecution for decades – first escaping from the Netherlands before he could be brought to trial, then successfully eluding the courts in Germany.

Cries of “Nazis get out, no fascists here” broke out in the court room as two skinheads, wearing black neo-Nazi-styled garb entered and took seats in the back.

Teun de Groot, the son of one of Boere’s victims stared long and hard at Boere, who sat across the room in his wheelchair.

Before the trial started Mr de Groot said: “I’m in a good mood and I feel like it will go to a good result”.

Outside the court a handful of protesters held up a pair of black banners that read “No peace for Nazi criminals” and “Don’t forgive, Don’t forget.”

Elisabeth Souvignier, an Aachen teacher and one of the protesters, said that “It has taken far too long for this case. I’m here today because I should be.”

Boere faces the rest of his life in prison if convicted of the 1944 killings of a bicycle-shop owner, a pharmacist and another civilian while part of an SS death squad codenamed “Silbertanne,” or “Silver Pine.”

The son of a Dutch man and German woman, Boere was 18 when he joined the SS at the end of 1940, only months after German forces had overrun his hometown of Maastricht and the rest of the Netherlands.

After fighting on the Russian front, Boere ended up back in Holland as part of “Silbertanne” – a unit of largely of Dutch SS volunteers like himself tasked with reprisal killings of their countrymen for resistance attacks on collaborators.

In statements after the war to Dutch authorities, which are expected to form the basis for the prosecution’s case, Boere detailed the killings, almost shot-by-shot.

Boere’s lawyers have declined to say how they will try to counter the confession, but could try to argue that their client was simply following orders.

In a 2007 interview with the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, Boere attempted to justify the killings, saying he was sorry for what he had done but that it was “another time, with different rules.”

The hearing ended after 90 minutes when the judges said they needed time to consider a motion from the defence to have the prosecutor removed from the case.

Defence lawyers argued that prosecutor Ulrich Maas made statements to the press that called into doubt his objectivity.

The court adjourned until Monday.