Ex-Captain of Notorious Nazi Unit Faces Trial

The 86-year-old former commander of a Nazi special forces unit faces court in Munich, Germany on Thursday on charges of murdering 164 people in Czechoslovakia at the end of World War II.

With suspects and potential witnesses dying of old age, the trial of Ladislav Niznanksy -- who led the so-called Edelweiss unit that hunted down and killed Slovak resistance fighters -- may be one of the last of its kind.

Niznansky is accused of taking part in the massacre of 146 people in two villages in Slovakia in 1945 and later of ordering the execution of 18 Jews, mostly women and children, in another village.

Former Nazi captain held since Jan. 16

After living quietly with his wife for 33 years in a Munich suburb, the former Nazi captain, whom neighbors describe as a friendly old man, was jolted back to the reality of the past when police rang his door bell on January 16. Since then, the man the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center describes as "a mass murderer" has been held in remand.

Despite the passing of 60 years, 24 witnesses, some of them survivors, have been located and will testify against the leader of a unit prosecutors say was known for the "special treacherousness and brutality" of its operations.

The Edelweiss team was tasked with hunting partisans in Slovakia, at the time a Nazi puppet state, but Niznansky told the German news magazine Focus that he "never had to kill someone" while serving with it.

Prosecuters claim complicity in 146 murders

According to prosecutors, the unit, which also included troops from the notorious German SS, rounded up and shot 146 people from the villages of Klak and Ostry Grun, including 70 women and 51 children, on January 21, 1945.

Niznansky, who was born in Czechoslovakia but has German citizenship, is said to have ordered that no one should be allowed to escape and to have personally shot dead 20 of the victims.

On February 7, 1945 he formed an execution commando team and ordered the killing of 18 Jews who had been found hiding in bunkers in Ksina, prosecutors say.

After his arrest in January, the director of the Jerusalem branch of the Wiesenthal Center urged Germany to expedite his trial so that he could finally be held accountable for his crimes.

"The numerous innocent victims murdered by the Edelweiss unit fully deserve that the person responsible for their tragic fate be held accountable for his crimes," said director Efraim Zuroff. "In that respect, the passing of time since the crimes were committed and the fact that Niznansky has hereto escaped justice in no way diminish the severity of his crimes and his own personal culpability."

"The Holocaust was neither an earthquake nor a hurricane, but a manmade crime for which those responsible must be held accountable," he said.

Niznansky fled into anonymity

Niznansky is believed to have fled to Germany in 1948 after a communist coup and was sentenced to death in Czechoslovakia in his absence in 1962.

He worked unnoticed for several years in Munich at Radio Free Europe, the US-funded station that broadcast to Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and was given German citizenship in 1996.

Germany was only alerted to his presence in 2001 after an investigation by Slovak justice authorities. Munich prosecutors then launched their own inquiry. His trial here is expected to involve 15 days of hearings and run until the end of October.