Walter Hauck

Walter Hauck (4 June 1918 - 6 November 2006) was a German SS officer famous for the atrocities done under his command during the Second World War.

Second world war and massacres
Before World War II, he worked in the German police. During World War II, in 1944 he had the rank of SS-Obersturmführer in the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend and led the 2nd company of the 12th SS Reconnaissance Battalion.

He was responsible for the Ascq massacre in April 1944, in which 86 civilians were shot and the population brutalized after a railway sabotage. In May 1945, he was responsible for another massacre in Leskovice, Czechoslovakia: 26 civilians died (including a 13-year-old boy) and 31 houses were burned down.

He was accompanied by Hildegarde Mende, previously a guard in the Terezinstadt ghetto.

After the war
Hauck was judged in Lille, France in 1949 for the Ascq massacre and was sentenced to death. After requests from some widows of the Ascq massacre, his sentence was converted to life imprisonment. In 1957, he was freed after a further penalty reduction and went to Germany, where he lived until his death in 2006.

In 1969 and 1977, Czechoslovakia asked Germany to extradite him for punishment for the second massacre, but these requests were rejected by the Stuttgart court. In 2005, the Czech Republic again asked for his extradition.