Wanted Nazi War Criminal Dies at Age 90 — a Free Man
Klaas Carel Faber, one of the world’s most-wanted Nazi war criminals, has died at age 90 after decades of living free in Germany, which rejected repeated attempts to extradite him to face prison for murder and collaboration.
Faber, a Dutch native who fled to Germany in 1952 after being convicted of war crimes, died Thursday in Ingolstadt, his wife, Jacoba, said Saturday.
Faber — whom the Simon Wiesenthal Center last year placed at No. 3 on its list of most-wanted Nazi criminals — was convicted in 1947 of involvement in 22 murders and for aiding the Netherlands’ Nazi occupiers during World War II. He was sentenced to death, but that was later commuted to life in prison.
In 1952, he escaped from prison and fled to Germany. He obtained German citizenship in 1954, and that saved him from at least four attempts to extradite him over the decades.
In the most recent attempt, German authorities refused a request last year from the Netherlands. In January, Ingolstadt Prosecutor Helmut Walter said he had filed a motion to have Faber serve his sentence in a German prison. But Faber was free at the time of his death.