Ex-Nazi convicted in WWII massacre dies without serving prison time

A former Nazi soldier who was convicted, but never served time, for his role in the massacre of 86 civilians in France during World War II has died, according to a report.

Karl Münter, who was a member of the Hitler Youth SS division, died at the age of 96 in northwestern Germany, according to London’s Independent newspaper.

Münter was just 21 when on April 1, 1944, a train carrying some 50 soldiers of the division was derailed by an explosion, in an act of sabotage by the resistance.

As revenge, the troops shot 86 men in the nearby village of Ascq in northern France — the youngest of whom was 15 years old.

“There’s another reason for me not end up in hell, so I don’t meet him there,” said the mayor of Villeneuve-d’Ascq, Gerard Caudron, in response to Münter’s death.

A French military tribunal sentenced Münter to death in absentia in 1949 for his role in the mass killing.

But he was pardoned in 1955 as part of the post-WWII French-German reconciliation efforts.

German prosecutors sought to reopen the war crime case against Münter — but they dropped the case last March under the legal principle known as double jeopardy, because he’d already been convicted in France.

Münter in July was also charged with incitement by German prosecutors for blaming Holocaust victims for their own deaths and denying that six million Jews were killed in the World War II genocide.

In an interview with German TV-station ARD last November, Münter said those killed in Ascq were to blame for their own deaths.

He also disputed that the Holocaust claimed the lives of six million Jews.

“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,” prosecutors from Lower Saxony said in a statement.

His incitement case was still ongoing when he died.

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