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And the matter of the Jews that is assigned to Hitler... be careful. There weren't millions of Jews [in Germany] at the time, that's already been disproved. The number six million is not correct.
~ Karl Münter denying the Holocaust.

Karl Münter, also Karl Muenter, was an SS officer involved in the massacre of 86 civilians in the French village of Ascq.

Biography edit

Münter and several other SS men were in Ascq in 1944 when partisans bombed a railway being used to transport a German convoy to Normandy. The convoy's commander, Oberst Walter Hauck, responded to the bombing by ordering Münter's squadron to search all the nearby houses and arrest any men they found. After the arrests were made Hauck gave the order to shoot all of the accused without a trial. Altogether 70 people were shot by Münter's squadron by the train tracks, and another 16 were killed in the village itself.

In 1949 Oberst Hauck and several members of Münter's squadron were convicted of war crimes for their involvement in the massacre. He himself was convicted and sentenced to death in absentia, as he could not be found at the time, having gone into hiding in Lower Saxony. He was eventually tracked down in 2018, but was not arrested due to all of those convicted of the Ascq massacre having been pardoned in 1955 during the reconciliation process. German prosecutors attempted to bring charges of being an accessory to murder against Münter but were unable to due to double jeopardy.

During a 2018 TV interview Münter was asked about the massacre. He stated that the 86 victims were responsible for their own deaths, but denied having fired any shots himself. He also alleged that it had been proven that the number of people killed in the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated. German prosecutors responded by bringing criminal charges against Münter under German hate speech laws, but Münter died in 2019 before the case could be brought to trial.