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Ex-Nazi Guard Expelled From U.S. to Germany

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

(Worthy News) – Authorities say a 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard has been deported from the United States. Friedrich Karl Berger arrived Saturday in his native Germany, where police were holding him for questioning in a case closely watched by Holocaust survivors.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency Berger, a German citizen, was sent back to Germany for horrific crimes. He served as a guard of a Neuengamme concentration camp sub-camp in 1945.

Last year, a U.S. judge ordered his deportation, saying prisoners at the camp were held in “atrocious” conditions, working “to the point of exhaustion and death.”

There were Jewish, Russian, Polish, Dutch, and others among the inmates. During the trial, Berger admitted he had prevented prisoners from fleeing the camp near Hamburg, in north Germany. He also accompanied prisoners on the camp’s forced evacuation that resulted in the deaths of 70 prisoners.

German authorities have now confirmed that Berger arrived Saturday at Frankfurt and was handed over to Hesse state investigators for questioning.

DECADES IN U.S.

Berger was ordered expelled by a Memphis, Tennessee court in February 2020. He had been living in the U.S. since 1959.

German prosecutors in the city of Celle are investigating the possibility of bringing charges against him. In December, they said they had shelved the probe because they could not refute his account of his service at Neuengamme.

Berger admitted to U.S. authorities that he served as a guard for a few weeks near the end of the war. But German authorities noted that he also claimed that he did not observe any abuse or killings.

However, prosecutors asked for him to be questioned again upon returning to Germany to determine whether accessory to murder charges could be brought.

In recent years, German prosecutors have successfully argued that by helping a death camp or concentration camp function, guards can be found guilty of accessory to murder.

This month a 95-year-old woman was charged with aiding and abetting mass murder for her role as a secretary at the Stutthof camp. Simultaneously, a 100-year-old man was blamed on the same grounds for working as a guard at Sachsenhausen. The camps were part of massive murders by German Nazis during World War Two when many were killed, including at least six million Jews.

DOUBTS REMAIN

Holocaust survivors and their supporters have mixed feelings about prosecuting former camp guards and others accused of participating in the Holocaust or Shoah. While some welcome the prosecution of former Nazis, others have their doubts.

Prominent Dutch journalist Phia Baruch, who lost her mother and more than 80 members of her extended Jewish family in the Holocaust, has criticized the prosecutions. “It doesn’t matter if Berger or others are prosecuted. After the war, I publicly said that I wanted them to be punished. But when I became older, I thought differently about revenge,” the Amsterdam-based Baruch told Worthy News

“One day, these guards and other Nazi criminals will have to account for their deeds.”
Baruch survived the Holocaust through a children’s rescue program of the Dutch Reformed Church. She stayed with Christian farmers on the Dutch island of Ameland.

“I learned there the Biblical principle to love your neighbor as yourself and that no other commandment is greater than these,” she recalled.

Baruch noted that “Germans are still ashamed“ about the actions of their grandparents and others during and around World War Two. “These late prosecutions of Nazis are no more than a plaster for the wounded pride of some war-era Germans and the later generations.”