Ex-Nazi
member faces trial for war crimes
Elisabeth
Zimmermann
Almost
59 years after the death of Dutch resistance fighter Jan Houtman, the
trial of 88-year-old former Nazi SS (SchutzStaffel) member Herbertus
Bikker opened on September 8, 2003, in the German district court of
Hagen. Bikker is accused of shooting the 27-year-old Houtman to death
on November 17, 1944, on a farm in the Netherlands district of Dalfsen.
The
trial sheds light on the brutal occupation of the Netherlands by Hitler's
National Socialist regime and the terrible consequences for resistance
fighters at the hands of both the military secret service and their
helpers, Dutch collaborators. That so much time elapsed before Bikker
was obliged to stand trial expresses the diffident attitude of German
authorities to those responsible for Nazi crimes. The trial was repeatedly
adjourned because of the health of the accused, who had not, as in other
similar cases, been found from the outset to be unfit for trial.
Herbertus
Bikker joined the Waffen SS [the "armed SS," the SS army that
numbered 900,000 at its height] during the German occupation of the
Netherlands, which lasted from 1940 to 1945. At the time of the offence
he was employed in the regular police as a guard in the Erika correction
and labour camp, in Ommen.
After
the fall of the Nazi dictatorship in May 1945 and the liberation of
the Netherlands, Bikker was initially sentenced to death in 1949 by
a Netherlands court. After an appeal the sentence was altered to life
imprisonment. On December 26, 1952, Bikker and six other convicted war
criminals, all members of the Dutch Waffen-SS or the secret police,
managed to escape from the prison in Breda. They fled over the German-Netherlands
border and reported to a German police station. There they were told
to pay a 10 deutsche mark fine for illegally crossing a border and were
able to continue their escape unhindered. They received assistance in
Germany from former SS members who were once again occupying influential
positions.
The
legal basis upon which authorities refused to extradite Bikker and other
escapees to the Netherlands rested upon a "Fuhrer-edict" decreed
in May 1943, which designated them to be German nationals. Thus, according
to the German Constitution of 1949, they could not be turned over to
other countries. The "Fuhrer-edict" guaranteed German citizenship
to all those who were members of Hitler's Nazi party or who were members
of the German armed forces.
Bikker
was summoned to appear before a Dortmund court in the mid-1950s, but
the case was discontinued due to "lack of evidence." The Netherlands'
courts were reluctant to hand over their evidence to the German courts.
Bikker
lived undisturbed in Hagen in North-Rhine Westphalia for the next 50
years. It was only by virtue of Bikker's own boast of having shot Jan
Houtman, in a 1997 interview with Stern reporter Werner Schmitz, that
a lawsuit was finally undertaken. Describing the events on November
17, 1944, as he lined up and shot Houtman, a member of the resistance
group "knokploeg," Bikker told Schmitz, "And then I gave
him the final shot."
Some
10 years ago, the Dutch law journalist and Nazi hunter, Jack Koistra,
traced Herbertus Bikker to his residence in Hagen. After this was reported
on Dutch television, the minister of justice in The Hague demanded Bikker's
immediate extraditiona move rejected by German authorities. In November
1995, German and Dutch members of anti-fascist groups along with a few
surviving resistance fighters demonstrated outside Bikker's Hagen apartment,
calling out, "Herbertus Bikker is a murderer." They were fined
for taking part in a "demonstration without a permit."
The
event brought the case to the attention of the Stern editors, Werner
Schmitz and Albert Eikenaar, and it is due to their investigative journalism
that Bikker again came before the courts. After the publication of the
Stern interview in 1997, chief prosecutor Ulrich Maaß from the
Nazi crimes central office began investigations at the state attorney's
office in Dortmund.
It
took another six years before the case commenced. In the meantime, some
of the eyewitnesses to Jan Houtman's murder had died. Jan Houtman's
widow had also died three years earlier. But an important witness, who
had already provided written evidence five years earlier, was able to
appear at the district court in Hagen on October 10, 2003, to testify.
Now
81 years old, Annie Bosch-Klink was well able to remember the events
which occurred 59 years earlier on her parents' farm. She was then 22
years old and from the kitchen window saw how two members of the SS
approached the farm. She was gripped by panic because her brother and
his friend, active members of the resistance, were staying at the farm.
Then she remembers one of the SS members suddenly breaking off from
the other. He pursued the men who were fleeing and then she heard a
number of shots. Her brother Jan and his friend, who had hidden themselves
in a dugout in a horse stall, also watched as Bikker shot at Houtman,
who lay wounded on the ground. Then they heard Bikker say, "Have
you had enough? You won't get up again. You're really dead now."
Annie
Bosch-Klink is able to recall the events so vividly because they remained
imprinted on her memory throughout her life. After Houtman's murder,
Bikker threatened her father, "I'll kill you as well," and
"Clear off, I'll get you later." Her description of the events
of November 17 clearly contradicts Bikker's defence, given in testimony
in the 1950s, that he shot Jan Houtman in "the course of his duties"
as he "attempted to escape."
Source:
World Socialist Website (WSWS).
