A 95-year-old man who was a guard at the Nazi concentration camp during World War II has been deported from the United States to Germany, authorities announced on Friday. Friedrich Karl Berger, who lived in Tennessee, was deported “for participating in Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution” while serving in the concentration camp in 1945, the Justice Department said.
Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson said in a statement that Berger’s withdrawal from the United States demonstrates the department’s “commitment to ensuring that the United States is not a safe haven for those involved in Nazi crimes against the United States.” humanity and other human rights violations “.
Department of Justice
“In this year we mark the “The case of the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg convictions,” Wilkinson continued, “shows that the passage of many decades will not prevent the Department from prosecuting on behalf of victims of Nazi crimes.”
According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), Berger is the 70th person identified as a Nazi persecutor who was withdrawn from the U.S.
A 2020 trial found that Berger served the Nazi regime in a subfield of Neuengamme, near Meppen, Germany, during the Holocaust. The judge who presided over the 2020 case said Meppen prisoners, many of them Jews, Russians, Dutch and Poles, were detained in the camp in the winter of 1945. The conditions, according to the judge, were ” atrocities, ”as inmates were forced to carry out outdoor work“ until exhaustion and death, ”the DOJ said.
Prisoners in Meppen camp were forced to build a so-called “frieze wall” to protect Germany’s north coast, according to the Hamburg Foundation’s Memorial and Learning Center Foundation. On the day the camp was evacuated, there were 1,773 inmates in the camp, according to the foundation.
Berger worked in the camp until the Nazis evacuated him in March 1945, at which time the prisoners were forced to go to the main camp in Neuengamme. The two-week transfer was made in “inhumane conditions,” according to the DOJ, and 70 people who were jailed died in the process.
Berger admitted during the trial that he protected the prisoners and prevented them from fleeing, U.S. officials said. He also admitted that he never applied to be transferred from his concentration camp guard role.
To date, according to the DOJ, Berger receives a pension from Germany for his previous work in the country, including his “war service.”
He was dismissed under the 1978 Holtzman Amendment because of his “voluntary service as an armed guard of prisoners in a concentration camp where the persecution took place,” the DOJ said.
Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Tae Johnson said the department “will never stop persecuting those who persecute others.”
“This case exemplifies the firm commitment of the ICE and the Department of Justice to prosecuting and relentlessly hunting down those who participated in one of the greatest atrocities in history,” Johnson said, “no matter how long it takes.”