US to deport ex-Nazi camp guard

A US court has ordered the deportation of a German man who served as a Nazi prison guard, the US Justice Department said on Thursday.

Friedrich Karl B., a resident of Tennessee now in his 90s, admitted to serving voluntarily as an armed prison guard at the Neuengamme concentration camp in the German state of Hamburg. Prisoners there were held in inhumane conditions and were worked "to the point of exhaustion and death," immigration judge Rebecca Holt said in her ruling at the conclusion of the two-day hearing.

Read more: The ratlines: What did the Vatican know about Nazi escape routes?

According to the court, the former-guard escorted prisoners from a nearby camp in Meppen, a city in Lower Saxony, to the main camp in Neuengamme in March 1945. About 70 prisoners died "under inhumane conditions" as part of the journey.

The guard "was part of the SS machinery of oppression that kept concentration camp prisoners in atrocious conditions of confinement," said Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski.

From 1938 to 1945, Neuengamme was the largest concentration camp in northwestern Germany. More than 100,000 people from all over Europe in the main camp and 85 satellite camps. About 43,000 people died in Neuengamme by the end of World War II.

B. had been living in the United States since 1959. It was not clear whether he would appeal or whether his deportation was imminent. An appeal would prolong his case by years and at his advanced age mean he may die before being deported or facing trial in Germany.

Since 1979, the US Justice Department has won 109 similar cases involving former supporters of the Nazi Regime. The last such deportation occurred in August 2018, when  95-year-old former SS guard´Jakiw Palij was expelled after living in New York since 1949. 

dv/sms (AFP, dpa)

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