US extradited former Nazi guard Friedrich Kar Berger to Germany

A 95-year-old former guard at the Nazi concentration camp Neuengamme landed in Frankfurt aboard a medical aircraft from the United States, a country in which he lived in exile for decades and now extradited him.

At the arrival, Friedrich Kar Berger he was handed over by the German Federal Police to officers of the Hesse Regional Criminal Investigation Office (LKA) for testimony.

The nonagenarian is accused of complicity in murder in the Neuengamme concentration camp, where he collaborated as a guard in the camp where prisoners were held in horrific conditions and forced during the winter of 1945 to perform forced labor in the open air until their death or exhaustion.

Before the American authorities, Berger confessed to having worked as a guard in an annex of the Neuengamme concentration camp near the town of Meppen, along the border with the Netherlands, although he said he was not aware of the torture of prisoners or the death.

Berger moved to the US state of Tennessee in 1959, where for years he lived without being recognized.

The discovery of Nazi-era files on a sunken ship in the Baltic Sea has led investigators in the footsteps of the former guard.

According to Spiegel, Berger unlikely to appear in court, given that the procedure opened against him by the general prosecutor’s office of Celle for complicity in murder had to be suspended for lack of evidence, as the institution itself reported last December.

And according to the sources of justice, the process could only be resumed in the event of new evidence against Berger, for example, or if the defendant blames himself during the interrogation, which is not to be expected.

The Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson says Berger’s extradition shows the “Commitment of the United States to ensure that the country is not a safe haven for those who participated in Nazi crimes against humanity and other human rights violations“.

Since 1979, the Justice Department has won similar cases against 70 people, but the pace of Nazi-era cases slowed down over time, and the ministry has no further such cases pending, which means that Shepherd could end up being the last Nazi guard expelled from the country.

After the war, Berger emigrated from Germany to Canada with his wife and daughter and arrived in the United States in 1959.

Berger, who is now a widower and has two grandchildren, said he was ordered to work in the camp, stayed there for a short time and was not carrying a weapon.

“After 75 years, it’s ridiculous. I can not believe itHe said last year while fighting his deportation from the United States. “I can’t understand how this can happen in a country like this. You force me to leave my house“, He added.

Justice Department investigators concluded that Berger worked in the German army before being sent to the concentration camp in the last months of the war.

In a trial in immigration court last year, Berger admitted that he was guarding the prisoners, did not request a transfer from the camp and was still receiving a pension from Germany. for work based in part on his wartime service, US officials said.

After the trial, Berger said much of what was determined in court was based on “lies.”

“I was 19. They ordered me to go», He stressed.

Neuengamme was between 1938 and 1945 the largest concentration camp in northwestern Germany. More than 100,000 people from all over Europe have been interned in this camp and its more than 85 annexes, where around 43,000 prisoners have lost their lives.

(With information from EFE)

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