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A Nazi war crimes suspect thought to have been involved in murdering around 430,000 Jews during the Holocaust has died before he could be brought to trial.
Samuel Kunz, 89, had been third on a most-wanted list drawn up by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre inJerusalem.
After studying Second World War documents, prosecutors had claimed Kunz helped kill hundreds of thousands of Jewish people between 1942 and 1943 in his role as a guard at the Belzec concentration camp in occupied Poland.
"It was clear to us all that Jews were killed there and were later burned too - we could smell it every day," Der Spiegel magazine has quoted Kunz as saying.
Charged in July, it is thought he was involved in taking victims off trains, pushing them into gas chambers and disposing of bodies in mass graves.
His death, only a few months before he was due to stand trial, has been confirmed by the state court in his home town of Bonn, in western Germany.
Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said the main feeling is one of "terrible frustration".
He added: "After decades in which this man lived freely in Germany, it looked like there was finally going to be a trial.
"The only consolation is that he was charged, he was exposed and at least a small measure of justice was achieved."
Since the Nuremberg trials after the war - which saw several top-ranking Nazis sentenced to death - German authorities have investigated around 25,000 suspected war criminals, but most cases have not reached court.
SKYNEWS
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