Heinrich Boere was born in Eschweiler, Prussia, Germany, to a Dutch father and a German mother, but his parents moved to Maastricht in the Netherlands when he was two years old.

[3] Following attacks on German occupation forces and Dutch collaborators, the SS and Police Leader for the Netherlands, Hanns Albin Rauter, ordered the Sonderkommando to assassinate civilians presumed to be in some way connected to the resistance.

[4] Boere's first killing was committed in July 1944 when he and fellow SS member Jacobus Petrus Besteman received orders from the local Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) office in Breda to murder a pharmacist named Fritz Hubert Ernst Bicknese, a father of twelve.

[3] In September 1944, on a Sunday, Boere and Hendrik Kromhout arrived in Voorschoten at the home of Teun de Groot, a bicycle-shop owner and father of five children, who hid fugitives in his shop and was an acquaintance of anti-Nazi activists.

As De Groot, still in his pyjamas, fumbled with his wallet to show his ID papers, Boere and Kromhout shot him.

After release from the camp, Boere initially went into hiding out of fear of being given a lengthy prison sentence, but managed to flee to West Germany.

Besteman, Boere's partner in the Bicknese slaying, served time in prison in the Netherlands for his war crimes.

[4] On 8 January 2009, the State Court of Aachen ruled that Boere was medically unfit and did not have to stand trial in the case.

"[7] In a documentary by Dutch journalists Rob van Olm and Jan Louter, who were the first to bring Boere to the attention of the public, he did admit to some feeling of remorse and stated he has confessed his crimes to a priest, and prayed for his victims.