Nazi Assassin Charged With 3 Murders Goes on Trial

Nazi hunter Ulrich Maass is a satisfied man. The assassin he has been chasing for years is going to stand trial at last. In the western German city of Aachen on Wednesday, Maass, a German state prosecutor from the city of Dortmund, will deliver his opening arguments in what will probably be the last trial against a Dutch war criminal from World War II, and one of the last Nazi war crimes trials.

In this file picture taken in Eschweiler, Germany, in 2003, Heinrich Boere is seen in front of his...

In this file picture taken in Eschweiler, Germany, in 2003, Heinrich Boere is seen in front of his house. Former SS member Heinrich Boere (88) is accused of the murders of three Dutch citizens: Fritz Bicknesse, Teun de Groot and Frans Kusters. The son of a Dutch father and a German mother, Boere was a member of the SS Sonderkommando Feldmeijer, which killed more than 50 Dutch citizens between September 1943 and September 1944 in retaliation for anti-German actions by the resistance.

(Eric Brinkhorst/AP Photo)

Former SS member Heinrich Boere (88) is accused of the murders of three Dutch citizens: Fritz Bicknesse, Teun de Groot and Frans Kusters. The son of a Dutch father and a German mother, Boere was a member of the SS Sonderkommando Feldmeijer, which killed more than 50 Dutch citizens between September 1943 and September 1944 in retaliation for anti-German actions by the resistance.

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At the beginning of this year it looked like Boere had slipped through Maass' fingers. The court in Aachen ruled that Boere was physically unable to stand trial. But Maass appealed the verdict, and Germany's highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court in Karslruhe, overruled the decision, clearing the way for Boere's trial. Maass is asking for a life sentence.

Boere was sentenced to death in the Netherlands in 1949 for his part in the murders -- in absentia. He had escaped in 1947 from a mine in the southeast province Limburg where he had been sentenced to forced labor, and fled to Germany. Because he had a German mother, Boere qualified for German citizenship, and since Germany doesn't extradite its own citizens, he was out of the reach of the Dutch courts.

But in 2000 a Dutch documentary filmmaker, Rob van Olm, tracked Boere down in Aachen. In the film Boere showed no sign of remorse. "I don't feel guilty. That's why I have always made sure they couldn't catch me," he said.

Boere served for two years with an SS division on the Eastern Front. It had made him indifferent to violence, he said. "We would eat our lunch sitting on top of dead Russians. The resistance to me were the enemy."