One of the world's most wanted Nazis, charged earlier this year with helping to kill 430,000 Jews in the Holocaust, has died at the age of 89 before he could stand trial, a German court said today.
Samuel Kunz, charged in July with assisting in the murder of Jews at Belzec death camp near the Polish city of Lublin between 1942 and 1943, died on November 18th, the court in the city of Bonn said.
Kunz, who was also accused of shooting dead 10 Jews, had been number three on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals after Sandor Kepiro of Hungary and Milivoj Asner of Austria.
Kunz's case came to light during investigations into Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk, who went on trial in Munich last year charged with helping to kill 27,900 Jews.
Like Demjanjuk, Kunz was born in what became the Soviet Union and served in the Soviet army, becoming a camp guard after his capture by the Germans, prosecutors said.
Reuters