Karl Münter has also disputed the fact that six million Jews died during the Holocaust, according to Agence France Presse.
In 1944, members of the French resistance derailed a train carrying 50 Nazi soldiers near Lille, France. A few goods cars came off the tracks but no one was hurt. At the time Münter was 21 years old and part of the Hitlerjugend, or “Hitler Youth,” SS division.
In revenge, on April 1 that year, Münter’s battalion went to the nearby village of Ascq. They shot dozens of men, aged between 15 and 75, dead.
“If I arrest men, I have responsibility for them, and if they run away, I have the right to shoot them,” Münter told a German TV program that aired last December.
Regarding the Holocaust, he said in the broadcast, according to The Telegraph: “There weren’t millions of Jews at the time, that’s already been disproved. I’ve recently read somewhere that the number which is talked about is not right.”
Münter admitting giving the interview, but his legal defense team argued that he did not know the interview had been recorded for broadcast.
After the interview was aired, the mayor of Villeneuve-d’Ascq, Gérard Caudron, spoke of “immeasurable disgust” at the comments, the BBC reported.
In 1949, Münter was sentenced to death in absentia by a French military tribunal for his role in the killings. He was pardoned six years later in a deal for post-war French-German reconciliation.
Münter denied shooting anyone himself. He claimed he was only ordered to arrest them and was present as the victims were lined up and murdered.
Asked if he regretted anything, he said: “No, not at all,” adding, “why should I regret it? I didn’t fire a shot.”
His Holocaust denial comments led to a hate speech investigation under the country’s Volksverhetzung (incitement of the masses) law. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to five years in prison.
