Former Nazi Guard Found in Tennessee Deported
- Details
- Category: World News
- Published on Saturday, 20 February 2021 10:14
- Written by Janet Walker
Frederick Karl Berger, a former Nazi Concentration Camp guard, near Hamburg, whose role was confirmed after an ID card was found and retrieved from a sunken ship, has been deported to Germany under the 1978 Holtzman Amendment.
"Berger's removal demonstrates the Department of Justice's and its law enforcement partners' commitment to ensuring that the United States is not a safe haven for those who have participated in Nazi crimes against humanity and other human rights abuses," said Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson. "The Department marshaled evidence that our Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section found in archives here and in Europe, including records of the historic trial at Nuremberg of the most notorious former leaders of the defeated Nazi regime."
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Berger, 95, a widower with children and grandchildren, made a new life for himself in Tennessee. In 1959, he emigrating to Canada and then to the United States. He was the last pending case the United States Justice Department had been working.
Berger, who claims he was forced to work in the subcamp of Neuengamme and that he "didn't carry a gun."
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"The camp held Russian, Dutch and Polish civilians, as well as Jewish prisoners and political opponents from France, Italy and other countries. In the winter of 1945, according to Berger's removal order, prisoners were forced to live in "atrocious" conditions and work "to the point of exhaustion and death,"' The Washington Post reported.
U.S. Official's determined before the liberation of prisoners in 1945 Berger was directly instrumental in 70 deaths over a two-week period and indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of other evacuated prisoners who were forced onto docked ships in the Baltic Sea which were inadvertently bombed by the British and Canadian military forces.
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During Berger's trial he admitted he was still receiving a pension from his German military service and that he worked at the camp and did not request a transfer. His identity and wartime crimes were authenticated by U.S. Justice Department historians based on an index card discovered and verified in a sunken ship.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg convictions, and this case shows that the passage even of many decades will not stop the pursuit justice on behalf of the victims of Nazi crimes. Berger is expected to be questioned by German authorities.
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Image credit: U.S. Department of Justice.
