US deports 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard to Germany
Associate Press
February 20, 2021
MEMPHIS, Tennessee -- A 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard
was deported from the United States and arrived Saturday in his native
Germany where he was being held by police for questioning, authorities
said.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said in
a statement that Friedrich Karl Berger, a German citizen, was sent back
to Germany for serving as a guard of a Neuengamme concentration camp
subcamp in 1945. The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of
Justice.
Friedrich Karl Berger, 95 (pictured left in 1959, and right
in 2012) was sent back to Germany for serving as a guard of a Neuengamme
concentration camp subcamp in 1945.
German authorities confirmed Berger arrived Saturday at Frankfurt and
was handed over to Hesse state investigators for questioning, the dpa
news agency reported.
Berger was ordered expelled by a Memphis, Tennessee court in February 2020.
German
prosecutors in the city of Celle investigated the possibility of
bringing charges against him, but said in December that they had shelved
the probe because they had been unable to refute his own account of his
service at Neuengamme.
Berger admitted to U.S. authorities that
he served as a guard at a camp in northwestern Germany, which was a
subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp, for a few weeks near the
end of the war but said he did not observe any abuse or killings, Celle
prosecutors said.
Celle prosecutors asked for him to be
questioned again upon his return to Germany, however, to determine
whether accessory to murder charges could be brought, police said.
In recent years, German prosecutors have successfully argued that by helping a death camp or concentration camp function, guards can be found guilty of accessory to murder even if there is no evidence of them participating in a specific killing.
According to an ICE statement, Berger served at the subcamp near Meppen, Germany, where prisoners - Russian, Polish, Dutch, Jewish and others - were held in "atrocious" conditions and were worked "to the point of exhaustion and death."
Berger admitted that he guarded prisoners to prevent them from escaping. He also accompanied prisoners on the forced evacuation of the camp that resulted in the deaths of 70 prisoners.
Berger has been living in the U.S. since 1959.
1 comment:
Just because he was a Nazi doesn't mean he was a bad guy. He might have liked dogs. Adolph Hitler liked dogs. He also liked fucking his niece. OK, I was wrong. They are both bad guys. String him up.
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