Heinrich Boere

Heinrich Boere (born 27 September 1921, Eschweiler), is a convicted Dutch war criminal.

Boere was born in Germany, but his parents moved to Maastricht when he was two years old. He joined the Waffen-SS in 1940 and in June 1941 at the age of 19 he left to fight on the Russian frontier. In December 1942 he attracted pyelonephritis and was sent back to Maastricht. [Menno van Dongen, [http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/article400930.ece A war criminal without remorse] , De Volkskrant 26 februari 2007 & [http://www.tekstidee.nl/ArtikeloorlogsmisdadigerBoere.htm ] (both Dutch), retrieved Aug 24 2008]

War crimes

In 1943, Boere became a member of a 15 man Waffen-SS squad of Dutch volunteers code named Silbertanne, or Silver Pine, that was tasked with killing members of the Dutch resistance. Boere joined the SS only months after the German Occupation of the Netherlands in 1940. Silbertanne was responsible for 54 known killings, three of which Boere admitted to committing. cite news
last = DAVID
first = RISING
coauthors =
title =Nazis' gunman dodges jail, ages in peace
work =
pages =
language =
publisher = Associated Press
date = 8 March2008
url = http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080307/ap_on_re_eu/nazi_hit_man_1
accessdate = 2008-03-08]

Boere’s first killing was committed in July 1944 when he and fellow SS member Jacobus Petrus Besteman received orders from the local Sicherheitsdienst office in Breda to murder a pharmacist named Fritz Hubert Ernst Bicknese. Wearing civilian clothes, Boere and Besteman walked into Bicknese’s pharmacy and asked him his identity. Upon a positive reply, Boere fired three shots into Bicknese’s upper body, then Besteman fired several more shots as Bicknese lay on the floor.

In September 1944 Boere and Hendrik Kromhout arrived in Voorschoten at the home of Teun de Groot, a bicycle-shop owner and father of five children who hid fugitives in his shop and was an acquaintance of anti-Nazi activists. As de Groot fumbled with his wallet to show his ID papers, Boere and Kromhout shot him dead. They then went to the apartment of F.W. Kusters, who was forced into their car, driven out of town, and shot when the pair, feigning a flat, tired to stop the car.

Post-War years

In the immediate post-war years Boere spent two years in an Allied prisoner-of-war camp, where he was interrogated and admitted to the three slayings. After release from the camp, Boere fled to Germany. In 1949 Boere was convicted in a Dutch court for the three murders, but the German government has since refused to extradite him. The West Germany government was responsible for prosecuting war criminals, but Boere was never brought to trial.

The Dutch government has continued to seek Boere’s extradition. In 1983 a German court refused the Dutch request on the grounds that Boere might have German citizenship, and Germany at that time did not permit extraditing its own nationals. In 2007 a court in Aachen ruled that Boere could serve his sentence in Germany, but an appeals court in Cologne overturned the ruling, saying that the 1949 conviction was invalid because Boere was unable to present a defense. Recently, Boere’s case has attracted a great deal of public attention and in 2007 opposition lawmakers brought the case up with the Dutch Ministry of Justice. Boere is listed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as a Nazi war criminal at large. Besteman, Boere’s partner in Bicknese slaying, has served time in prison in the Netherlands for his war crimes.

Today Boere lives in an old-age home in his birth town of Eschweiler, Germany.

On 14 April 2008 the state prosecution in Dortmund announced to be preparing to file charges against Heinrich Boere. [cite news | last = Crossland | first = David| coauthors = | title = 86-Year-Old SS Killer Faces Murder Charges| publisher = Der Spiegel | date = 2008-04-14 | url = http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,547216,00.html | accessdate = 2008-04-14]

Notes