A court in Germany says the world’s third most-wanted Nazi suspect has died
before he could be brought to trial.
Bonn’s state court said in a
statement Monday that 89- year-old Samuel Kunz died November 18.
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Kunz was
indicted on charges he was involved in the entire process of killing Jews at the
Belzec death camp: from taking victims from trains to pushing them into gas
chambers to throwing corpses into mass graves.
No trial date had been
set.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement in response to the
news on Monday afternoon. Efraim Zuroff, the center’s director in Israel, said
it was “incredibly frustrating” that Kunz died before trial.
“The fact
that Samuel Kunz lived in Germany unprosecuted for so many decades is the result
of a flawed prosecution policy which ignored virtually any Holocaust perpetrator
who was not an officer.
It was only the recent, long-awaited change in
this policy which led to Kunz’s indictment and the opportunity to hold him
accountable for his crimes.
“We urge the German authorities to expedite
all such cases, given the advanced age of the suspects, so that a measure of
justice can still be achieved,” he said.