The last living veteran of the SS death squad behind the Babyn Yar massacre is quietly living out his final years in a picturesque German town — as the Simon Wiesenthal Centre branded the failure to put him on a trial a “disgrace”.
This week — as the 80th anniversary of the massacre was marked with memorial services in Babyn Yar — the JC tracked Herbert Wahler down to his unassuming home on a residential street, where he is known locally for his remarkable sporting prowess.
Wahler was a member of Einsatzgruppe C, which systematically shot dead tens of thousands of defenceless Jewish children, women and men in the atrocity in Ukraine, which has been called the “Holocaust of bullets”.
He has never been tried and at the age of 99 has made his home in the affluent historical town of Melsungen in south-west Germany. He has admitted to having been part of the death squad but denies taking part in the killings, saying he was serving as a medic.
In 2014, the Simon Wiesenthal Center sent the German government documents that listed Herbert Wahler as a member of the SS murder squad which slaughtered Jews across Ukraine from 1941 to 1942. The public prosecution office in the German city of Kassel opened an investigation into Wahler in September 2017 but closed it in April 2020, claiming there was not enough evidence to bring charges against him.
Nearly 34,000 Jewish men, women and children were killed over 48 hours in 1941 around the site of the Babyn Yar ravine near the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. In the evening, SS troops were served hot soup and schnaps.
Speaking to the JC, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s chief Nazi-hunter Dr. Efraim Zuroff said: “It’s a disgrace that he is free and the prosecutor’s office in Kassel closed their investigation into him. You can’t understand why these people are not being brought to trial.
“I can’t tell you how shocked I was when they claimed that there is not enough evidence against Wahler to put him on trial. This man was a member of Einsatzgruppe C – an SS death squad. It was tasked with carrying out mass murder. That was the exact purpose of these murder squads. What else exactly do they need as proof?”
In 2017, Wahler admitted to political magazine Kontraste that he was in Kiev at the time of the Babyn Yar massacre, and in 2018 he confirmed to the Hessische Niedersächsische Allgemeine newspaper that he had been in the SS and a member of Einsatzgruppe C.
However, Wahler said he did not take part in the killings and was only serving in a medical capacity. The Simon Wiesenthal Center says that under recent changes to German law there is enough evidence to place him on trial.
Dr Zuroff said: “Legal procedural changes were made in 2018 which mean that anyone who was involved in a wider context of murder and genocide, could be charged. Yet here we have someone who was a member of an SS Einsatzgruppe, which was stationed at the time and place of massacre, and he is still not being brought to trial.
“Sadly it’s like Russian roulette here. Basically whether you get a prosecutor who is determined to bring people to justice, and who is really qualified in these cases, or whether it’s a person has hardly experience in these cases, or whether it is even a Nazi sympathiser with no motivation to bring former Nazis to justice.”
Dr Zuroff added: “I know the claim Wahler made – that he was a medical worker – but think about it – just who was he supposed to be giving first aid to? To armed SS troops? Well, who were being injured by?
“It was the poor Jews who were being shot, being murdered, not the other way round. The Jews didn’t injure the Germans at all – how could they? You wish they had been able to defend themselves.”
The tiny town of Melsungen in the state of Hesse is home to just around 13,700 inhabitants. Surrounded by green hills, it is full of quaint streets with the timbered houses, and a stone bridge runs over the river Fulda.
When the JC knocked on Wahler’s door this week to request an interview with him, it was opened by a woman who explained she was his carer and suggested asking about him at the house next door. The neighbour there, a middle-aged woman answered, yelled: “Ach! You can just forget it!” and slammed the door.
The town is steeped in Jewish history. The first two Jewish families were recorded living there in 1532. By 1880, I88 Jews were recorded as living there, a peak of 5 per cent of the town’s population.
When Hitler came to power in March 1933, 79 Jews were living in Melsungen. By October 1942 there were none.
One neighbour of Wahler’s, Stephanie Siebert-Walter, 47, told the JC: “I know the story of Herbert Wahler, and I know what he is supposed to have done. I have mixed views on this.
“People in my own family lost their jobs because they refused to support the Nazi party, so clearly all this is not something that’s nice for me and my family because we live right by.
“But his family have said that the claims made about Herr Wahler are not true. We don’t know him directly and he must be very old now so we don’t see him. But when he was young we said hello occasionally and he always seemed nice and friendly.”
Today, Melsungen makes a point of honouring its Jews in many ways. Dotted along its streets are ‘Stolpersteine’, small copper memorial stones set outside the houses of Jewish people sent to concentration camps.
On Kristallnacht – 10 November 1938 – Nazis stormed Jewish homes throughout Melsungen. But a local butcher, Friedrich Stöhr, gave refuge to five Jews and stood at his door with his butcher’s blades telling the Nazis that if they wanted to take his friends, they would have to come past him first.
A memorial stone has been erected to Stöhr in Melsungen, and also to Fritz Bauer, the former chief public prosecutor in Frankfurt who pushed for changes to German legal procedures to ensure further prosecutions of former Nazi perpetrators.
The memorial is surrounded by white roses in honour of the White Rose student movement members who were arrested and murdered for opposing the Nazi regime.
Speaking to the JC, former priest Gerhard Peter, 71, explained why local people found the issue of Herbert Wahler difficult.
He said: “Many people in Melsungen know about the case of Herbert Wahler, but I don’t know the man personally, and it has not been proved in court that he is guilty. If this ever happens, then in terms of the church and forgiveness, really, the church cannot issue forgiveness. The only person who can really forgive is the victim.
“It is a matter of shame, however, I feel, that it is taking decades for such cases to be brought before the courts.”
His views are shared by Hans-Peter Klein, a researcher in local Jewish history. In 2014 Klein won the Obermayer Award for his voluntary work helping to preserve the history and culture of vanished Jewish communities.
Klein lives a stone’s throw from Herbert Wahler’s home in Melsungen, and says the German legal system has to act now if it really wants to hold former Nazis to account for their crimes.
“I think it is a disgrace that it is taking so long to bring all these cases to trial. Germany has a real deficit here. Every year they don’t do this then all these people who are accused of horrible crimes will just die off and never be held to account.”
