Heinrich Boere

Heinrich Boere (27 September 1921 – 1 December 2013) was a convicted German-Dutch war criminal and former member of the Waffen-SS. He was on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals.

Early life

Heinrich Boere was born in Eschweiler, Prussia, Germany, to a Dutch father and a German mother, but his parents moved to Maastricht in the Netherlands when he was two years old. He volunteered for the Waffen-SS in September 1940, only months after the German occupation of the Netherlands. In June 1941 at the age of 19, Boere left to fight on the Eastern Front including, in 1942, service in the Caucasus. In December 1942, he contracted pyelonephritis and was sent back to Maastricht.

War crimes In 1943, Boere volunteered for the SS-Sonderkommando Feldmeijer, a Dutch Waffen-SS unit. Their primary task was assassinating dissidents, and those retaliating against the Nazi occupation of their country by acts of resistance. By the end, it would include anyone presumed to be connected to a dissident. This operation, codenamed 'Silbertanne' (Silver Fir), was responsible for 54 known killings, three of which Boere admitted to personally committing. Following attacks on German occupation forces and Dutch collaborators, the SS and Police Leader for the Netherlands, Hanns Albin Rauter, ordered the Sonderkommando to assassinate civilians presumed to be in some way connected to the resistance.

Boere's first killing was committed in July 1944 when he and fellow SS member Jacobus Petrus Besteman received orders from the local Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) office in Breda to murder a pharmacist named Fritz Hubert Ernst Bicknese, a father of twelve. 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 he lay on the floor. The Provincial Court of Appeal in Cologne ruled on 7 July 2009 that Boere was fit for trial, overturning the lower court's ruling. Following a judicial review by the German Federal Constitutional Court, it was decided not to accept Boere's appeal and that Boere was indeed fit to stand trial. However, according to the court he would be under medical supervision, being provided with a doctor for the length of the trial. The trial started on 28 October 2009, at Aachen's regional court.

In 2009, Boere lived in an old-age home in his birth town of Eschweiler. In a documentary by Dutch journalists Rob van Olm and Jan Louter, who were the first to bring Boere to the attention of the public, he did admit to some feeling of remorse and stated he has confessed his crimes to a priest, and prayed for his victims. On 23 March 2010, he was sentenced to life in prison. His defence, that he would have been shot had he disobeyed orders (sometimes known as the 'Nuremberg Defense'), was rejected. Following the ruling of the court, Boere's solicitors announced that they would appeal the judgment.

After his appeal was rejected, Boere began serving his life sentence on 16 December 2011 at the age of 90. Boere died on 1 December 2013 while in prison custody at Fröndenberg.