The US deported a 95-year-old man to Germany after a federal investigation revealed 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, took part 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 serve as a safe haven for human rights violators and war criminals,” Acting ICE Director Tae Johnson said in a press release.
- “We will never stop prosecuting those who persecute others,” Johnson added.
- “This case illustrates the steadfast commitment of both ICE and the Department of Justice to pursue justice and relentlessly hunt down those who participated in one of history’s greatest atrocities, however long it lasts.”
Details: Berger was investigated and prosecuted by the Department of Justice’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section, ICE’s Office of Principal Legal Advisor (Memphis, Tennessee), Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center, and Homeland Security Investigations’ field office in Knoxville, Tennessee.
- After a two-day trial in February 2020 A judge found that Berger, who had lived in the US since 1959, was expelled from the country under the 1978 Holtzman amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act because his service as a concentration camp warden was support in Nazi-sponsored persecution.
- At the time, Berger told the Washington Post, “I can’t understand how this can happen in a country like this. You’re forcing me out of my house.”
- A court ruled that Berger was serving in a subcamp Neuengamme near Meppen, Germany, where Jews, Poles, Russians, Danes, Dutch, Latvians, French, Italians and political opponents of the Nazis were held captive.
The chairman has issued advice find that Meppen prisoners were held in “appalling” conditions in the winter of 1945 and exploited for forced outdoor labor, working “to the point of exhaustion and death”.
- The court ruled, and Berger admitted that he helped guard inmates to keep them from escaping during their workday from dawn to dusk.
- The court found that Berger was helping guard the prisoners during their forced evacuation to Neuengamme’s main camp when Allied British and Canadian forces marched to Meppen in late March 1945.
- The forced evacuation lasted almost two weeks and claimed the lives of some 70 prisoners.
- The court also ruled that Berger never requested a transfer of the concentration camp guard and that he continues to receive a pension from the German government on the basis of his employment in Germany, “including his wartime service”.
The big picture: The Justice Department said Berger was the 70th Nazi persecutor to be deported to Germany from the US.