US Deports 95-Year-Old Former Concentration Camp Guard To Germany

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

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, 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 subcamp near Hamburg 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 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 worked “to the point of exhaustion and death”.

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, news agencies have reported.