"The death of Karl Münter, that means that the justice will not be rendered", is saddened Marguerite-Marie Béghin, the eldest daughter of one of the 86 civilians to have been massacred in Ascq, in the north of France. 1944.
Karl Münter, a former 96-year-old SS man, threatened to appear soon in Germany for endorsing the Nazi massacre and made Holocaust denouncements in 2018, has just died, the prosecutor's office said on Sunday. "The case against him is suddenly extinguished," added the German justice.
This former SS, involved in the massacre of Ascq in northern France in 1944, had just been indicted in July for a trial for incitement to racial hatred and the memory of the dead. .
"This trial, we did not expect in a spirit of revenge but it should allow us to express ourselves, to testify, to talk about our victims and our suffering," said Marguerite-Marie Béghin.
Seven and a half years old at the time, she said "wake up every morning thinking about the massacre". "I think that transmission is important, this crime must not be forgotten."
Recent remarks downplaying the Holocaust
Karl Münter was also being prosecuted for remarks made in late 2018 on the public television channel ARD.
In particular, he was assured that the figure of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis was exaggerated. "I recently read somewhere that this figure was wrong, I do not believe in it anymore," he said.
The former SS also condemned the massacre of 86 civilians in Ascq. Asked by ARD whether he regretted these events, the applicant, claiming that he had not participated directly in the killings but had watched the people arrested, had replied: "No, not at all, why should I regret?"
"If I arrest people, I'm responsible for them, and if they try to flee, I have the right to fire on them," he added.
Considered a "hero" by neo-Nazis
The massacre was committed during the night of April 1 to 2, 1944 in retaliation for the derailment of a train carrying about 350 SS. The trial that was to take place in Germany, subject to the state of health of the accused, was a revenge for the descendants of the victims. For the German justice had in March 2018 abandoned prosecutions for his direct role in 1944, arguing that he had already been convicted by a military court in France in 1949 and that he could not be tried a second time.
Karl Münter has never seen this sentence in Germany and was able to continue his life working in the post office.
Until the end, he kept sympathies for the Nazi ideology. According to ARD, in November 2018 he participated in a meeting of the German neo-Nazi party NPD in Thuringia, to speak as a "witness of the time" and to sign pictures of him. He was considered a "hero" within this movement, according to the German channel.
With AFP