Interview mit NS-Verbrecher: "Ich bereue nichts!" | Panorama | NDR

Sometimes there are moments in a reporter's life

that surprise you

An interview with a living Nazi criminal

for example.

Whom we found under astonishing circumstances.

My colleagues have been investigating

the neo-nazi scene for years

Who is always meeting in secret places

Recently such a meeting took place again

and one of the speakers was a former SS officer

who is now 96 years old: Karl M.

We didn't recognize his name at first

but according to a court verdict, he's a war criminal

who hasn't been in prison for a single day until now

Also, we visited him and much to our surprise

he not only opened his door to us

but also gave us an interview.

Robert Bohn, Julian Feldmann, Fabian Horst and André Reising.

The French village of Ascq.

Here on the train rails

began 74 years ago

a horrible crime of the Waffen-SS.

German soldiers killed 86 innocent men.

"The massacre from Ascq", is called here.

Reneau de Bont (?) experienced it as a young girl.

She was 10 years old at the time.

Without the massacre I would have had a father.

A complete different life.

It has been proven for a long time

that the criminals were all soldiers

from the 12th SS-Tank division.

And he is one of them.

Karl M., junior squad leader.

Back then 21 years old.

Until now he hasn't been in prison because of the massacre.

Today he lives here in Lower-Saxony.

He hasn't publicly spoken about his time in the Waffen-SS until now.

He talks to us.

Karl M. is 96 years old

He volunteered to join the SS

- Do you regret everything?

- No. Not at all.

Not at all.

Why would I regret anything?

- Because many people lost their lives.

- But many were also happy that we showed up!

What crimes did we commit during the war?

- The SS committed no crime?

- Not during the war.

In 1944, Karl M. and his division were tranferred

from Belgium to France.

As the train was traveling through Ascq

an incident happened

French resistance fighters conducted an attack

on the train at the train station.

Inside were Karl M. and about 400 SS men.

Three wagons derailed, but nobody was harmed.

The SS men were determined for revenge.

I was in the back of the train and it happened at the front.

I reported to my boss.

He told me to get a couple of men, get out and clean the street.

- and what was that?

- To clean the street, also, to search in the houses for

young rebels that might be hiding and take them.

Someone must have done the attack.

Arrest all young men. There will be a guilty one among them.

Karl M. with 100 SS men go throw the place and "clean it".

It's all about deterrence, revenge.

They wake up families.

- All of a sudden there was noise.

I heard big, heavy boots going upstairs.

and I thought up there in my bed:

what is that?

It was the Germans.

They entered the bedroom with my two young brothers and me

They pulled the blankets looking for a man

then they went away

They took my father, who told us he will come back.

The men were gathered together

when the revenge escalated.

The Germans started shooting

Today Karl M. claims this was because the unarmed French

apparently tried to escape.

- When I arrest them, they have to stay until the situation is resolved.

If they want to run away is because they have a bad conscience

and then as a guardian I have a reason to shoot.

If I hit them it's bad luck.

- Karl M. says he didn't shoot.

- I didn't fire a single shot.

I didn't fire a single shot.

- You didn't fire a single shot?

- I didn't fire a single shot.

- You were simply there?

- Yes.

- Just there as the furious SS men lost all constraints?

86 men shot dead

many injured

at the train station, the parking lot, bodies lay everywhere.

From at least one of the bodies the gold teeth were pulled out.

There are proofs that the Waffen-SS in Ascq, France, executed 86 civilians

as revenge for an attack on a transport train making a stop there.

We are convinced that there are enough evidence

that he participated in this action.

At the end of the action is also the father of Reneau de Bont (?) dead.

When I woked up, my mother told I had no papa anymore.

They killed all the men.

They thought that by killing them all

they will also be killing the one who broke the train.

The youngest victim was 15, the oldest 75 years old.

All inocents.

Among the victims was not a single resistance fighter.

There was a meeting the next day

at school

everyone had to go there

because the corpses were all laying there

side by side

and we had to identify them

20,000 people attended the funeral of the

victims of the Massacre of Ascq

In 1949 a French court sentenced Karl M. to death

for complicity in murdering 86 people.

He was living in Germany at this time

and wasn't extradited.

At that time there were no extraditions, so it was never requested.

- Nobody tried to extradite him?

- No.

Karl M. was never punished for his actions.

He lives a quiet life and worked at the post office.

In Ascq, a memorial remembers us about the massacre in 1944.

For the families of the victims it's difficult to accept that

the murderers from then remain unpunished.

They complained to the German authorities some years ago.

We think about it almost every day.

We cannot simply forget.

We cannot forget what happened here. Impossible.

As a matter of fact, now the German authorities are getting active.

They found one of the criminals: Karl M.

In 2015 an investigation against him was started.

Due to suspicion of assistance to murder.

Assistance to murder doesn't fall under the statue of limitations in Germany

The investigators searched Karl M.'s house

he doesn't understand what's all about.

- Everything happened under very different laws back then.

And now they're going by the laws they re-wrote

and made to benefit them

otherwise they wouldn't come here after 70 years

and made a mess out of my home

after 70 years.

- According to him, the laws back then weren't just different, but also better

and the government too.

Would you wish for someone like Hitler today?

- Why not?

He took good measures.

and that with the Jews he's accused for

- But he killed millions of people

- with the "millions", you should be careful with that

we didn't have that many Jews back then.

This was already refuted, I read somewhere.

This number, 6 million or whatever, is just not true.

Last March the prosecution office dropped the investigation

against Karl M.

on insufferable grounds: nobody should be punished for a crime twice.

Even though the sencente was never carried out in France, it's still on the paper.

- Nobody can be prosecuted twice for the same crime.

The accused was already sentenced to death in 1949 by a French military court

this case cannot be resumed in France now

because it falls under the statue of limitations there

Germany is obligued to accept that due to European laws

even though murder doesn't fall under the statue of limitations in Germany.

Had he not been on trial in France, we would now start a process

against him for complicity in the murder of 86 people

In this way Karl M. eludes the justice for the second time.

Due to the investigation he caught the attention of neo-nazis

who make a hero out of him

They gave him this album among other things

- We thank you for your commitment to your people and your country.

The German Youth.

Then they invited him to be a speaker

in Fretterode in Thuringia

at the house of the well-known neo-nazi Torsten Heise

The second in charge of the NPD

invited him to a lecture by contemporary witnesses

In the right scene the war criminal Karl M. is now celebrated.

and he's even asked for autographs.

- I signed this one like a hundred times

Everyone wanted to have one.

I wrote "Karl" here.

- Everyone wanted an autograph?

- Some people brought 4 of them to sign!

- This cannot be. To have no remorse.

No regrets.

Sometimes you do a bad thing, but you then regret it.

But he... doesn't regret anything.

He would do it again.

This cannot be true.