Subscribe to RSS @
88 year old Heinrich Boere, a Dutchman of Dutch-German origins, is currently on trial in Germany for the murder of three Dutchmen during the Second World War. Boere clearly sided with the German side of his family and joined the SS serving in occupied Holland. When the war was over, he admitted the killings to Dutch authorities but escaped to Germany before he was tried – presumably for war crimes. Now – an old man and 65 years after the event he finds himself in the dock.
Please let me make it clear. Boere sounds, from the newspaper reports, like a thoroughly distasteful man. He is reported to have said in an interview with Focus magazine – “Yes, I got rid of them. It was not difficult. You just had to bend a finger”. Clearly there is no remorse in this mans soul and my sympathies lie entirely with the families of those three men. They certainly do not lie with Herr Boere. And the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime are abhorrent and a lingering stain upon modern Germany.
But I am still somewhat puzzled by this. Whether Germany now likes it or not, the SS was a legitimate and government sponsored paramilitary organisation that carried out the will of the incumbent regime of the time. They were also in the middle of a war. And, it is claimed, the three Dutchman that caused Heinrich Boere to “bend his finger” were active members of the Dutch Resistance and, as such, enemies of the State. To Boere, his SS cohorts and the German regime, these men were terrorists.
And their execution is no different to thousands of other executions that have taken place throughout history. Wars are littered with the bodies of such people.
Now I am not unhappy to see Boere put on trial. One wonders why it took so long. But for me it raises a serious question. If 65 years after the event the current government can decide that Boere’s actions that day constitute a crime then what of every other soldier in every other war that has – or may – face the order to execute an individual for their activities against the state? Do they need to stop and think to themselves that one day, their own country may turn against them?
The question is why did it take 65 years ? With regards to the rest of your post, anybody that kills non-uniformed people is at risk of prosecution, take the CIA guys that waterboarded people, they were only waterboarded people and they nearly found themselves in court with a change of US President. Slobodan Milosevic was the President, but they prosecuted him, there is right and wrong, sometimes the boundaries get blurry, sometimes it takes too long, but wrong is wrong and most people know when they are doing wrong.
Oh I agree with the right and wrong statement. But Slobodan Milosevic was not prosecuted by Serbia – who would rather he had not been – although the actions of Americans performing torture comes closer to the mark. the equivalent would be those people finding themselves in the dock in 50 years time.