US deports former Nazi concentration camp guard to Germany

Memphis (US), February 20

Authorities in the US have deported a 95-year-old man on Friday who acknowledged working as a guard in a Nazi concentration camp.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said in a statement that Friedrich Karl Berger, a German citizen, was sent back to Germany this month for serving as a guard of a Neuengamme concentration camp in 1945.

The case was investigated by the US Department of Justice.

Berger was ordered expelled by a Memphis, Tennessee court in February 2020 but will not face trial in Germany because prosecutors there dropped the case against him for lack of evidence.

According to an ICE statement, Berger served at the subcamp near Meppen, Germany, where prisoners — Russian, Polish, Dutch, Jewish and others — were held in “atrocious” conditions and were worked “to the point of exhaustion and death”.         

Berger admitted that he guarded prisoners to prevent them from escaping. He also accompanied prisoners on the forced evacuation of the camp that resulted in the deaths of 70 prisoners.

Berger has admitted serving as a guard for a few weeks near the end of the war but has said he did not observe any abuse or killings, the dpa news agency has reported.

Berger has been living in the US since 1959. — AP