Nazi criminal dies before trial

A German suspect facing war crime charges of colluding in the murders of 430,000 Jews at Belzec death camp in World War II, died at his home aged 89.

German Nazi suspect Samuel Kunz was accused of being a guard at Belzec death camp in occupied Poland.

He was third on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most wanted Nazi war crime suspects and was due to go on trial early next year.

He was also accused of personally shooting dead 10 Jews at the camp in occupied Poland during 1942-43.

State Prosecutor Andreas Brendel said Kunz died at home last Thursday. The cause of death is unclear.

Kunz had admitted to working at Belzec and had been called as a witness in the trial of alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk, 90, who was deported from the US in 2009.

The prosecutors had alleged that both men trained at the Secret Service camp at Trawniki.

Kunz was accused of shoving Jews from trains at Belzec, pushing them into gas chambers and throwing their bodies into the mass graves.

He was also alleged to have shot dead two people who had escaped from a train and killed eight others who had been wounded.

Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s unit for hunting down Nazi war criminals, said it was very important that Kunz had been indicted.

“At least a small measure of justice was achieved,” he said.

Demjanjuk, 90, went on trial last year on charges of assisting in the murder of 28,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp. He denied the charges.