The US has deported a 95-year-old man to Germany after a federal investigation found that he worked as a guard in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, the Justice Department announced Saturday.
Why it matters: Federal agencies said Friedrich Karl Berger, a German citizen, participated in Nazi-sponsored persecution in 1945 while serving as a guard in the Neuengamme concentration camp system in northern Germany.
What they say: “We are committed to ensuring that the United States will not be a safe haven for human rights violators and war criminals,” Acting ICE Director Tae Johnson said in a news release.
- “We will never stop persecuting those who persecute others,” Johnson added.
- “This case illustrates the steadfast commitment of both ICE and the Department of Justice to pursue justice and to hunt relentlessly for those who have participated in one of the greatest atrocities in history, no matter how long it takes.”
Details: Berger was investigated and prosecuted by the Department of Human Rights and the Special Prosecution Division of the Department of Justice, ICE’s Office of the Chief Legal Adviser (Memphis, Tennessee), Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center, and the Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations in Knoxville, Tennessee.
- After a two-day trial in February 2020, A judge has ruled that Berger, who has lived in the United States since 1959, was removed from the country under the Holtzman Amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1978 because of his service as a concentration camp guard in aiding prosecution by Naz sponsored.
- At the time, Berger told the Washington Post: “I do not understand how this can happen in a country like this. You’re forcing me out of my house. ‘
- A court has found that Berger served in a Neuengamme sub-camp near Meppen, Germany, detaining Jews, Poles, Russians, Danes, Dutch, Latvians, French, Italians and Nazi political opponents.
The presiding judge issued an opinion and found that prisoners from Meppen were detained during the winter of 1945 in ‘horrific’ conditions and exploited for outdoor forced labor, which ‘worked to exhaustion and death’.
- The court found and Berger admitted that he helped inmates prevent them from escaping during their dawn-to-dusk workday.
- The court found that Berger had been helping to guard the prisoners during their violent evacuation to the Neuengamme main camp when the allied British and Canadian military forces advanced on Meppen at the end of March 1945.
- The forced evacuation lasted nearly two weeks and claimed the lives of about 70 prisoners.
- The court also found that Berger had never requested a transfer of the concentration camp guard service and that he was still receiving a pension from the German government on the basis of his service in Germany, ‘including his wartime service’.
The whole picture: The Justice Department said Berger was the 70th Nazi persecutor to be deported from the United States to Germany.