BERLIN — Heinrich Boere has admitted to gunning down three men as part of a Waffen SS death squad — civilians killed in retribution for partisan attacks in Holland as the tide of World War II turned against the Nazis.
But for more than six decades after the war, he managed to avoid punishment — first escaping from a prisoner of war camp in the Netherlands, then successfully eluding the courts in Germany.
On Wednesday, the 88-year-old goes on trial at the state court in Aachen, charged with three murders — hits on a bicycle-shop owner, a pharmacist and another civilian.
It will be the first time that Teun de Groot sees the confessed killer of his father — the bicycle shop owner — with his own eyes.
"I don't think he can get out of it in any way now," de Groot said in a telephone interview from his home in Heiloo, Netherlands.
"I would be a little disappointed if he got less than natural life (in prison), which is only a few years for him anyway," he added. "You know when you owe a debt, it grows with time. Well, he should actually have to pay interest."
Boere volunteered for the Nazis' fanatical Waffen SS only months after Adolf Hitler's 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 a notorious death squad codenamed "Silbertanne," or "Silver Pine." Made up largely of Dutch SS volunteers like himself, they were tasked with reprisal killings of their countrymen for resistance attacks on collaborators.
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