Germany – A man accused of murdering Dutch civilians as a member of a Waffen SS hit squad said at his trial Friday that he was proud about being chosen as a volunteer to fight for the Nazis.
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Heinrich Boere, 88, made his first comments to the Aachen state court since his trial opened at the end of October. As part of that SS unit, he is charged with killing a bicycle-shop owner, a pharmacist and another civilian. He faces a possible sentence of life in prison if convicted.
Boere said he remembered his mother waking him up the night in 1940 that Germany invaded his hometown in the Netherlands and seeing Stuka dive-bombers overhead. Instead of fearing the German bombs, Boere, whose father was Dutch and mother German, said his family was elated as the attack unfolded.
“(My mother) said ‘they’re coming’ now things will be better,” he told the court, speaking animatedly to the panel of judges.
“It was better,” he added later.
Boere was born in Eschweiler, Germany, on the outskirts of Aachen where he lives today, but moved to the Netherlands when he was an infant.
After the Germans had overrun his hometown of Maastricht and the rest of the Netherlands, he remembers as an 18-year-old seeing a recruiting poster for the Waffen SS, signed by Heinrich Himmler. It offered German citizenship after two years of service and the possibility of becoming a policeman after that.
He showed up with 100 other Dutchmen at the recruitment office and was one of 15 chosen.
“I was very proud,” Boere told the court in a statement read by his attorney before he answered questions from the presiding judge.
After fighting on the Russian front, Boere ended up back in the Netherlands as part of “Silbertanne”, a unit of largely of Dutch SS volunteers responsible for reprisal killings of their countrymen for resistance attacks on collaborators.
Boere admitted the three killings to Dutch authorities when he was in captivity after the war but managed to escape from his POW camp and eventually return to Germany.
He was sentenced to death in the Netherlands in 1949, a sentence later commuted to life imprisonment, but Boere has managed to avoid jail so far.
Still, Boere told the court he was aware of the possibility he would be pursued by authorities, so much so that he never married.
“I always had to consider that my past might catch up with me, and I didn’t want to inflict that upon a woman,” he said in his statement.
Boere refused to comment on his time with Silbertanne, but his attorneys said he would address that period when the trial resumes Dec. 2
y’msh
I like him at least he is upfront an Honest about his hate, unlike most former Nazis who lie about their beliefs.
if he is so proud of his service, then he should be proud to spend the rest of his miserable life in solitary confinement.
(and slowly rot away)
That’s exactly why we shouldn’t hold the 9/11 court in New York. The terorrists will use the platform to say how proud they are!
All of mankind will also feel very proud to have him hanged.
kill ’em
This moron Boere appears to believe the ramblings of an overmedicated dictator.
Same as these idiots who say nutzis and hitler were smart.
What these morons don’t understand is that hitler and nutzism were ancillary if not puppets. Circumstance gave them a stage but they didn’t make circumstance. Akin to something filling a vacuum.
This was a time frame when near surface energy reserves allowed mass production industry on a global scale. (We all know where the near surface energy came from.) The initial mass-production was war production.
Control of energy resources and industry is relative to social order or a social hierarchy: an inherent pattern of mass psychology. It’s not that someone/s planned the details. It’s that there was a rush to power and let the chips fall where they may.
If you realize the Shoah was matched by mass war casaulties from two wars, you’ll begin to see the circumstance. This time frame also had an influenza epidemic and finally the use of nuclear weapons.
The enormity of the negative had to have enormous motivation the concious/unconcious leap to gain status/control of mass production industry.
Boere is a common idiot.
Off to the gas chambers with him
I will quote my late mother a”h who survived Auschwitz but carried a tattooed number on her arm her entire life.
“FARBRENT ZUL ER VEREN!”