"Boy, the Germans have come, everything will be better from now on." That is what Heinrich Boere's mother said when she woke him on May 10, 1940, the day Germany invaded the Netherlands. Almost 70 years later Boere (88) is on trial in the German city of Aachen for the murder of three men in 1944. Boere was a member of an SS commando that killed 50 innocent Dutch civilians in 1943 and 1944 as retaliation for attacks by the resistance.

He was sentenced in absentia in the Netherlands in 1949, after he escaped to Germany, and it would take 70 years until he was before a judge again. The trial was off to a difficult start when it began on October 27: prosecutors and lawyers were caught up in procedural wrangling for a month, but the merits of the case were finally discussed on Friday.

Boere's lawyer read a life story dictated by his client, after which the court president questioned Boere on any unclear issues. Some of his answers - in German with a thick Dutch accent - were animated. He talked about a football match between German and Dutch SS members, which was won by the Netherlands' team. But other times he seemed very confused.

Willing to contribute to the cause

Boere, the son of a German mother and an unemployed Dutch father, lived in the Dutch city of Maastricht from the age of three. His mother was very pro-German, which explains her delight about the German invasion in 1940. The Boere family's circumstances improved significantly during the occupation; the father and his sons all found work.

Last living Nazi war criminals Boere escaped the Netherlands in 1947 and was never extradited by Germany because he also holds German citizenship. A Dutch documentary about him in 2000 showed him without remorse and got German prosecutors interested in prosecuting him. Germany has lately stepped up tracking and prosecuting the last living Nazi war criminals. In August, Josef Scheungraber was given a life sentence for 14 murders in Italy. The trail against John Demjanjuk, who is charged with complicity in 28,000 murders in the concentration camp Sobibor, will begin on Monday.

Boere recalled a visit from members of the Dutch Nazi party NSDAP in 1940, who asked if the family was willing to contribute to the cause. Heinrich decided to volunteer with the Waffen-SS. He passed the test, which made him proud, he told the judge on Friday. "In 1940 they only accepted a small part of all the volunteers. It wasn't like later in the war, when they took everyone." Boere was trained in Munich. "There they taught me: Befehl ist Befehl [an order is an order]."

No more questioning

He was assigned to the Dutch regiment Westland of the SS Wiking division. With this unit he fought on the eastern front from 1941 to 1943. He was part of an artillery unit and never fired a gun during his time in Russia, he said. But he did catch a contagious disease that got him sent back to the Netherlands to heal and recover. In 1944 he received a personal order from the highest-ranking SS boss in the Netherlands, Hans Rauter, to report to the SS Sonderkommando Feldmeijer. That is where Boere's story stalled; he refused to talk about what he did as a member of this death squad.

Lawyers for the co-plaintiffs [relatives of the victims who are allowed to enter evidence and question the accused in a German court] wanted to know more about his time spent in Russia. His commander Bernhard Dietsche was a notorious war criminal who was involved in several massacres of Jews. Boere said he had nothing to do with these murders and had never even heard of them. That is when his defence lawyer intervened. As far as he was concerned, there will be no more questioning about what happened in Russia.