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Nazi War Crimes Suspect, 89, Dies Before Trial

AOL — One of the world’s most-wanted Nazi suspects, accused of being involved in the killing of more than 400,000 Jews during the Holocaust, died last week, several months before he was to stand trial, according to reports.

Samuel Kunz died Nov. 18 at age 89, in his hometown near Bonn, Germany, the state court in Bonn said, according to The Associated Press. No cause of death was given.

An indictment in July accused Kunz of 10 counts of murder and 430,000 counts of accessory to murder on accusations that he trained at the SS Trawniki camp in occupied Poland and was sent to the Belzec death camp, where he worked as a guard from January 1942 to July 1943, the AP said.

Prosecutors accused him of being involved in every part of the death process at the camp: taking people from trains, pushing them into gas chambers and throwing the bodies into mass graves, according to the AP.

Word of his death was frustrating news for the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center, which named Kunz the third most-wanted suspect in April.

“The overriding feeling is one of terrible frustration,” Efraim Zuroff, director of the center in Jerusalem, told Agence France-Presse. “After decades in which this man lived freely in Germany, it looked like there was finally going to be a trial. Now, of course, that won’t happen.

”The only consolation is that he was charged, he was exposed and at least a small measure of justice was achieved,“ Zuroff told AFP.

Kunz was also accused of ”personal excesses” in the alleged shooting of 10 Jewish victims, the AP said.

His name surfaced in January as prosecutors were preparing for the upcoming trial of 90-year-old John Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker who lived in Ohio and is charged with murdering nearly 28,000 people at the Sobibor death camp in Poland, the AP said. His trial in Munich is expected to last until December.

A retired civil servant, Kunz was to be charged as a minor, as he was under age 21 when the alleged killings took place, The Guardian reported.

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7 Comments

  • ce

    ok, G-d Himself will deal with this rat.
    We here, will try to do mitzvos in the names of those who he took into his own hands to kill.

  • mendel

    may all reshaim dye before they even gets to court(h’ took care of him)
    to comment #2 gahenim or as we lubavichers say gehenom is compared to a washing-machine that cleans the neshama, so i wish he should stay in him durty “clothing”
    and 2. as i know it that non-jews that did not keep the 7 noahide laws after death are stuck in this world and do not go to the next-world “olam haba”being bored in the grave and thats a bis punishment

  • Don-t worry-he didn-t get off easy

    He probably died because he was exposed and about to go on trial.

  • Susan

    Only God knows what is in a persons heart. What he did was atrocious! Murder is murder – weither it be 1 or 100,000,000. I’m glad that those people are finally dying away… Let’s hope that it never happens again..