USA deport former concentration camp guards to Germany

During the Nazi era, Friedrich Karl B. was a guard in a subcamp.  The n he lived undisturbed in the US for decades until investigators found him.

(AP) –

 The  USA has expelled a former concentration camp guard to Germany after many decades.

 The  95-year-old Friedrich Karl B. was received by the Federal Police on Saturday after landing at Frankfurt Airport, as confirmed by a police spokesman. According to a report by the magazine “Der Spiegel” lthe man had been in the US state of Tennessee since 1959, without his past being known. Only the discovery of index cards from the Nazi era in a sunk ship in the Baltic Sea brought the investigators on his trail.

A photo by Friedrich Karl B. from 1959.

Foto: AFP / US Department of Justice

According to the Federal Police, B. was flown to Frankfurt with an ambulance aircraft from the USA.

 The  95-year-old is charged with complicity in murder. According to the American authorities, B. confessed to guarding prisoners in a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg near Meppen in Lower Saxony. He claims to have only followed orders. A year ago a judge in the United States ordered his deportation. B. put up a legal defense, but failed.

 The  former concentration camp man was questioned at the airport immediately after landing. At first it was only about clarifying his willingness to give evidence, said a spokesman for the responsible public prosecutor in Celle. B. had agreed in principle to answer questions about the allegations, but not immediately because of the rigors of the journey. Against the 95-year-old there is no arrest warrant in Germany. That is why he remained at large after his arrival. It is uncertain whether there will be a lawsuit.

75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the “Luxemburger Wort” wants to help keep memories of the Holocaust alive – with an online database of the victims who were killed in the concentration camps.

 The  German judiciary started investigations against B. last year, but then closed it again in December “in the absence of sufficient suspicion”. At that time it was said: “

 The  granted guarding of prisoners in a concentration camp, which was not used for the systematic killing of the prisoners, is not sufficient as such for a crime.

 The  investigation in the USA did not connect the accused to a specific act of killing.

However, the termination of the proceedings is “not set in stone”, said a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office in Celle on Saturday of the dpa. If B. is ready to comment, the proceedings can be restarted at any time. This will be decided next week at the earliest.

Acting US Attorney General Monty Wilkinson said the deportation proved that the United States is not a “safe haven” for people “involved in Nazi crimes against humanity and other human rights abuses.” ICE’s executive director, Tae Johnson, said, “We will never stop persecuting those who persecute others.”

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A Jewish assembly camp in Luxembourg

Around 300 men and women were housed in the “Jewish old people’s home” in Fünfbrunnen between 1941 and 1943. Very few inmates survived the war.

Final stop at the concentration camp: the list of Luxembourg victims

75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the “Luxemburger Wort” wants to help keep memories of the Holocaust alive – with an online database of the victims who were killed in the concentration camps.