A 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard living in Tennessee was deported on Saturday back to his native Germany.
In February 2020, a Memphis immigration judge decided that Friedrich Karl Berger could be deported because he helped “Nazi-sponsored persecution” when he served as an armed guard in the Neuengamme concentration camp system, the Justice Department said in a statement. the press.
The court concluded that Berger guarded a camp near Meppen, where Russian, Jewish, Polish, Dutch and French prisoners were held. The judge said the prisoners were kept in “atrocious” conditions and were forced to work, working “until exhaustion and death,” the statement said.
The camp was abandoned in March 1945 and Berger helped move prisoners to another camp, the court concluded. The nearly two-week trip to the new location was made in “inhumane conditions” and about 70 prisoners died, officials said.
Berger acknowledged during his trial that he protected prisoners to prevent them from escaping, did not request a transfer from the concentration camp and was still receiving a pension from Germany for his service during the war, according to federal officials.
Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson said Berger was deported because the United States is not “a safe haven for those who participated in Nazi crimes”.
“The Department has gathered evidence that our Human Rights and Special Proceedings Section has found in archives here and in Europe, including records of the historic Nuremberg trial of the most notorious ex-leaders of the defeated Nazi regime,” he said in a statement. in this year in which we mark the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg convictions, this case shows that even the passing of many decades will not prevent the Department from seeking justice on behalf of the victims of Nazi crimes ”.
Berger told The Washington Post last year that he was 19 at the time he was a guard and was forced to work in the field. He said he made his living in the United States by building peeling machines.
“After 75 years, this is ridiculous. I can not believe this. I cannot understand how this can happen in a country like this. You are forcing me to leave my house, “he said.
