Heinrich Boere
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War crimes
Germany
Murder (3 counts)
Heinrich Boere | |
|---|---|
 Boere in 2010 | |
| Born | 27 September 1921 |
| Died | 1 December 2013 (aged 92) |
| Criminal status | Deceased |
| Convictions | Netherlands War crimes Germany Murder (3 counts) |
| Criminal penalty | Netherlands Death Germany Life imprisonment |
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.
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.[1] In December 1942, he contracted pyelonephritis and was sent back to Maastricht.[2]
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.[3] 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.[4]
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.[3]
In September 1944, on a Sunday, 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. As De Groot, still in his pyjamas, fumbled with his wallet to show his ID papers, Boere and Kromhout shot him. They then went to the apartment of Frans Willem Kusters, forced him into their car, and drove out of town. The pair falsely claimed that they had a flat tire, stopped the vehicle and shot Kusters.[3]
