The “Beast of Bolzanu,” former SS officer Michael Seyfert, has died in an Italian hospital at the age of 86.
He had been transferred to the Caserta hospital from the nearby Santa Maria Capua Vetere prison where he was serving a life sentence, with a fractured femur on October 25. Several days later, he underwent emergency surgery for a gastric complication, according to the Associated Press. An autopsy was to be performed.
Seyfert was convicted in absentia by a military court in Verona in 2000 on nine counts of murder while he was an SS guard in the Bolzano prison transit camp, located in Italy’s Alpine South Tyrol area.
Born in the Ukraine, Seyfert hid his identity after the war and moved to Canada. He was extradited to Italy from that country in 2008, where he had lived since 1951, to serve his sentence, after the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his appeal.
Seyfert admitted at the time to being a guard at the death camp, but denied any involvement in the activities within.
Witnesses during the trial accused him of starving a 15-year-old prisoner to death, raping and murdering pregnant women, and well as gouging out a prisoner’s eyes.
Towards the end of World War II, the camp was used to hold Jews, political prisoners, Italian resistance fighters and those drafted for the factories, as well as German army deserters who were being shipped north.
Born in the Ukraine, Seyfert hid his identity after the war and moved to Canada. He was taken to hospital a few days ago from prison to undergo emergency surgery, according to a hospital source.