March 6 (UPI) — An immigration judge ordered the deportation of a Tennessee man who served as an armed guard of concentration camp prisoners in Nazi Germany during World War II.
Judge Rebecca L. Holt found German citizen Freidrich Karl Berger to be eligible for removal from the United States to Germany under the 1978 Holtzman Amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act citing his “willing service as an armed guard for prisoners at a concentration camp where persecution took place,” the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday.
“Berger was part of the SS machinery of oppression that kept concentration camp prisoners in atrocious conditions of confinement,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s criminal division. “This ruling shows the department’s continued commitment to obtaining a measure of justice, however late, for the victims of wartime Nazi persecution.”
The court found that Berger said he worked guarding prisoners to prevent them from escaping as they worked dawn to dusk and while they traveled to and from worksites and their subcamp.
He also said he never requested a transfer from concentration camp guard service and continues to receive a pension from Germany based on his employment there “including his wartime services.”
