Soren Kam: Most-wanted Nazi dies aged 93 a free man

The Nazi was convicted in absentia over the death of a newspaper journalist

Kam Soren was convicted of murder after he fled Denmark for Germany (YouTube)

One of the most-wanted Nazis in the world has died aged 93 without having been punished for a murder conviction.

Danish former volunteer officer Søren Kam died on 23 March, just a little more than a fortnight after his wife passed away – according to the German newspaper Allgauer Zeitung as reported by Reuters.

Kam was the fifth-most wanted war criminal by Jewish rights organisation Simon Wiesenthal Center, that seeks to bring former Nazis to justice and educate about the Holocaust.

The Dane had been a volunteer officer in the Schalburg Corps, a SS-Viking division, and was one of three men who killed Danish anti-Nazi newspaper editor Carl Henrik Clemmensen in 1943.

A Danish court convicted him in absentia of the murder after the war. Another man was executed for the same crime.

Kam had fled to Germany where he obtained citizenship in 1956 and his new home country had refused to extradite him to Denmark several times, according to Danish media.

“The fact that Søren Kam, a totally unrepentant Nazi murderer, died a free man in Kempten (Germany), is a terrible failure of the Bavarian judicial authorities,” Dr Efraim Zuroff, from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said in the statement.

“Kam should have finished his miserable life in jail, whether in Denmark or Germany. The failure to hold him accountable will only inspire the contemporary heirs of the Nazis to consider following in his footsteps,” Dr Zuroff added.

On 30 August 1943, Clemmensen insulted chief editor of the pro-Nazi publication Fædrelandet (the Fatherland) Poul Nordahl-Petersen.

Hours later, believed to be just after midnight the next day, Clemmensen was shot dead by eight bullets by three different guns in Lundtofte.

His body was found in the morning with bullet wounds to his head and upper body.

The center’s most-wanted list, which now lists names of eight men, is based on realistic chances that the accused can be brought to justice. It is not a list of the most notorious Nazis, Dr Zuroff said.

Additional reporting by Reuters