Berlin: Samuel Kunz, one of the world's most-wanted Nazi suspects who was under indictment on allegations he was involved in killing hundreds of thousands of Jews at a concentration camp in occupied Poland, has died, a Bonn court said on Monday.
The 89-year-old Kunz died on Nov. 18, the Bonn state court said in a short statement. Court spokesman Joachim Klages said Kunz died in his hometown, near Bonn, but did not have details on the cause of death.
Kunz's name had surfaced in past investigations, but the recent allegations came up in Germany as prosecutors were poring through World War II-era documents in preparation for another case, that against the retired autoworker from Ohio, John Demjanjuk, who is now being tried in Munich.
The resulting investigation prompted Simon Wiesenthal Center to list Kunz in April as the world's third most wanted Nazi due to the fact that he was allegedly involved personally in the killings and to the "enormous scope" of his suspected crimes, said the center's chief Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff.
"This is incredibly frustrating and I would urge the German authorities to expedite the remaining cases so that justice can be achieved," Zuroff told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Jerusalem, after learning of Kunz's death.
Still, he said: "He was under indictment - I think that's very important, I wouldn't minimise that fact - at least a small measure of justice was achieved."
Kunz was indicted in July on ten counts of murder and 430,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he trained at the SS Trawniki camp in occupied Poland and was sent from there to the Belzec death camp as a guard from January 1942 through July 1943.
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