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A 95-year-old man was deported from the United States to Germany after admitting that he was working as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp in 1945.
Friedrich Karl Berger, a German A citizen who has been living in the United States since 1959, participated in “Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution” and has been expelled from the country following an investigation, the US Department of Justice said.
His removal was ordered by a Memphis court. Tennesseeauthorities said, and backed by the US Board of Immigration Appeals.
The prisoners from the Neuengamme camp are among those remembered at the Feldscheune Isenschnibbe memorial site. Photo: AP
However, after arriving at Frankfurt airport, he will not face trial in Germany because prosecutors dropped the case against him for lack of evidence.
The US immigration and customs control agency (ICE) said Berger worked as a guard in a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg.
Russian, Polish, Dutch, Jewish and other prisoners in the sub-camp near Meppen in northwestern Germany, near the border with the Netherlands, were held in “appalling” conditions and worked to the point of exhaustion and death, a statement from ICE. saying.
Berger accompanied the prisoners in the forced evacuation of the camp that resulted in the death of 70 prisoners, according to authorities.
He admitted to serving as a guard for a few weeks near the end of the war, but said he did not observe any abuse or murder, the German news agency dpa reported.
In a statement, Acting United States Attorney General Monty Wilkinson said: “Berger’s removal demonstrates the commitment of the Department of Justice and its law enforcement partners to ensure that the United States is not a safe haven for who have participated in Nazi crimes against humanity and other rights abuses.
“The Department gathered evidence that our special prosecutions and human rights section found in archives here and in Europe, including records of the historic Nuremberg trial of the most notorious former leaders of the defeated Nazi regime.
“In this year as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg convictions, this case shows that the passage of even many decades will not deter the department from seeking justice on behalf of the victims of Nazi crimes.”
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Remembering the Holocaust, a ‘task for all generations’
Berger is the 70th Nazi persecutor to be expelled from the United States, the justice department said.
A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in the German city of Celle said police were asked to question him upon his return.
However, a police spokesman said there is no live investigation linked to him and that he has not been detained.
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