Siert Bruins

Bruins was born in March 1921 in Weite, Netherlands. He had 3 brothers. Together with his father Harm and his brother Derk-Elsko he became a member of the Dutch political party NSB. During the war both Bruins brothers joined the Waffen SS and fought at the Eastern Front, During the last days of WW II Bruins fled to Germany, where he could escape from the Dutch jurisdiction because he was granted the German nationality as a former Nazi-soldier Derk-Elsko Bruins also lived in Germany after the war, where he died on 5 February 1986 in Gerolstein. == Prosecutions and convictions ==

He was sentenced to death in absentia by a Dutch court in 1949 for his murder of Dutch farmer and Resistance member Aldert Klaas Dijkema. Germany refused to render him to the Netherlands. The death sentence was later revised into a lifelong sentence. Dutch journalist Gideon Levy told the German authorities about other crimes of Bruins. In October 2013 he was placed on trial in Hagen, Germany. Though Bruins admitted to being present when Dijkema was executed in the night of 21 September 1944 in Appingedam, he claimed the shot was fired by his SS superior, Oberscharführer because no witnesses could be called, "the exact circumstances of the crime can no longer be established," she said. An alternative conviction, for manslaughter, was not possible due to statute of limitations. In the Dutch conviction from 1949 it is stated that according to a confession of Neuhäuser, both men, Bruins and Neuhäuser have shot Dijkema in the back, each with 4 bullets. ==References==