17 Facts About Heinrich Boere

Heinrich Boere was a convicted German-Dutch war criminal and former member of the Waffen-SS.

Heinrich Boere was on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals.

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.

Heinrich Boere 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 1943, Heinrich Boere volunteered for the Sonderkommando Feldmeijer, a Dutch Waffen-SS.

Heinrich 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, a father of twelve.

In September 1944, on a Sunday, Heinrich 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.

From that point on, Heinrich Boere was stateless, which was confirmed during the trial against him that started in October 2009.

West Germany was responsible for prosecuting war criminals, but Heinrich Boere was never brought to trial there.

In 2007, a court in Aachen ruled that Heinrich Boere could serve his sentence in Germany, but an appeals court in Cologne overturned the ruling, saying that the 1949 conviction was invalid because Heinrich Boere was unable to present a defence.

Heinrich Boere's case attracted a great deal of public attention and, in 2007, the opposition in the Dutch parliament brought the case up with the Ministry of Justice.

On 8 January 2009, the State Court of Aachen ruled that Heinrich Boere was medically unfit and did not have to stand trial in the case.

The Provincial Court of Appeal in Cologne ruled on 7 July 2009 that Heinrich Boere was fit for trial, overturning the lower court's ruling.

In 2009, Heinrich Boere lived in an old-age home in his birth town of Eschweiler.

Heinrich Boere was not taken into custody for the trial against him.

Heinrich Boere died on 1 December 2013 while in prison custody at Frondenberg.