German prosecutors have leveled charges against a 96-year-old man following his appearance on a television program in which he both denied the impact of the Holocaust and blamed victims for their own deaths.
Former SS soldier Karl Munter faces up to seven years in prison for incitement and “disparaging the memory of the deceased” for his remarks during a show broadcast by German channel ARD last November, reported German newspaper The Local on Wednesday.
In 1944, Munter, a member of the “Hitler Youth” SS division, was part of a 50-soldier train derailed by an explosion triggered by members of the French Resistance in Lille, France. He was 21 at the time, and no soldiers were injured in the incident.
Despite suffering zero casualties, the Hitler Youth battalion, led by Obersturmführer Walter Hauck, took “revenge” on April 1, 1944, against dozens of men in the nearby village of Ascq, France. A total of 86 men, aged between 15 and 75, were slaughtered by the SS soldiers.
“If I arrest men, I have responsibility for them, and if they run away, I have the right to shoot them,” Munter said during the November broadcast. He went on to deny that there were even millions of Jews on the Earth at the time of World War II, when some 6 million Jewish people were murdered in the Holocaust.
“The accused did not dispute giving the information to journalists, but he said he did not know that the interview was recorded and would be later broadcast,”…
