BERLIN — Karl Muenter, a former SS soldier who was convicted in France of a wartime massacre but who never served any time for his crimes, dies in northwestern Germany. He was 96.
Marcus Tischbier, a representative of the district mayor’s office in Nordstemmen, the village where Muenter lived, confirms today that he died on Friday. He has no further details.
Muenter was a sergeant with the 12th SS Panzer Division “Hitler Youth,” which was responsible for the massacre of 86 men in Ascq, France in April 1944, about two months before the Allied D-Day landings.
After partisans blew up a railroad line being used to shuttle German troops to Normandy, Muenter and other members of the division were ordered to arrest all males in the town. The victims, ranging from teenagers to the elderly, were lined up and shot.
He was convicted in absentia of war crimes and sentenced to death by a French court after the war, along with other participants in the massacre.
But by the time he was tracked down in 2013 in the Lower Saxony village where he lived by the great-grandson of one of the Ascq victims, the statute of limitations had passed.
— AP
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