A 95-year-old man who was a Nazi concentration camp guard during World War II has been deported from the U.S. to Germany, authorities announced Friday. Friedrich Karl Berger, who lived in Tennessee, was deported “for serving in the concentration camp in 1945” by Nazi-sponsored acts, the Justice Department said.
Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson said in a statement that Berger’s removal from the U.S. was the department’s “commitment to ensuring that the United States is not a safe haven for those who participated in Nazi crimes against the United States. humanity and other human rights violations. ”
Department of Justice
“In this year in which we 75th anniversary of the conviction in Nuremberg, “Wilkinson continued,” this case shows that the course of many decades will not even deter the Department from pursuing justice on behalf of the victims of Nazi crimes. ”
According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), Berger is the 70th person to be removed from the US as a Nazi persecutor.
A 2020 trial found that Berger had served the Nazi regime in a Neuengamme sub-camp near Meppen, Germany, during the Holocaust. The judge who presided over the case in 2020 said that Meppen prisoners, many of whom were Jewish, Russian, Dutch and Polish, were detained in the camp in the winter of 1945. The conditions, according to the judge, were ‘horrific’, as the prisoners were forced to do outdoor work “to the point of exhaustion and death,” the DOJ said.
According to the Foundation of Hamburg’s memorial and learning centers, prisoners in the camp in Meppen had to build a so-called ‘friesenwall’ to protect the north coast of Germany. On the day the camp was evacuated, there were 1,773 prisoners in the camp, the foundation says.
Berger worked at the camp until the Nazis evacuated it in March 1945, after which the prisoners had to move to the main camp Neuengamme. The two-week transfer was done in “inhumane conditions”, according to the DOJ, and 70 people who were in jail died in the process.
U.S. officials admitted during the trial that Berger guarded the detainees and prevented them from escaping. He also admitted that he had never requested to be transferred from his role as a concentration camp guard.
The DOJ has said to date that Berger is receiving a pension from Germany for his previous service in the country, including his “wartime service”.
He was removed by the 1978 Holtzman Amendment because of his “willing service as an armed guard for prisoners in a concentration camp where prosecution took place,” the DOJ said.
Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Tae Johnson, said the department “will never stop succeeding those who persecute others.”
“This case illustrates the steadfast commitment of both ICE and the Department of Justice to pursue justice and to hunt relentlessly for those who participated in one of the greatest atrocities in history,” Johnson said, “no matter how as long as it does not last. “