Former SS man faces `last' war crimes case

"I don't know, I don't remember."

The words repeated by Mr Julius Viel in court yesterday, an 82-year-old man charged with the "cruel and motiveless" murder of seven Jewish concentration camp prisoners in 1945.

Over a year after he was arrested, the white-haired Viel shuffled into court in the western city of Ravensburg yesterday for the first day of what the German news media has dubbed "the last Nazi war crimes trial".

Mr Viel denies the seven counts of murder at the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia 55 years ago.

He admits he was an SS officer during the war but maintains he was never a member of the Nazi party. He says he first heard of the concentration camp at Theresienstadt after the war and never served there, contradicting documentary evidence produced yesterday.

His lawyers had argued that Mr Viel was unfit to stand trial, an opinion not shared by court appointed doctors.

It is not the first time Mr Viel has stood trial for alleged Nazi war crimes. A previous investigation was launched in 1960 after his name was found on a list of SS officers who served in Theresienstadt.

But that investigation was closed four years later after a key witness for the prosecution died before giving evidence.

This trial is expected to run until the end of February and the state prosecutor has lined up 34 witnesses from Germany and abroad including Mr Adalbert Lallier, a Montreal-based university professor. It was his testimony that convinced the Stuttgart-based state prosecutor to reopen the investigation against Mr Viel.

Mr Lallier says he was forced to serve in Mr Viel's SS troop at Theresienstadt from the age of 17. He relates that in the last days of the war, with enemy forces approaching from the east and west, over 1,700 inmates from the concentration camp were forced to dig antitank ditches. He claims that early in April 1945, Mr Viel had picked up a rifle and shot "six or seven Jews".

"I can only guess that Mr Lallier is buying his own freedom at my expense," said Mr Viel yesterday, accusing the professor of "shocking cheek".

After the war, Mr Viel became a respected journalist with a Stuttgart newspaper and was awarded a government medal in 1983.

He has maintained that he is the victim of mistaken identity since he was first approached by the high-profile Nazi hunter Mr Steven Rambam in 1998. Mr Rambam told investigators in Stuttgart that at the end of their conversation, Mr Viel told him: "They tried before and failed. They will fail again."