The government is at last kicking out a 94-year-old German ex-Nazi who’s been living in the United States since 1959.
An immigration judge ordered Friedrich Karl Berger's deportation on Feb. 28 after a two-day trial in Memphis. Berger’s been living in Oak Ridge.
He’s got 30 days to appeal. No date was immediately set for his removal.
According to The Washington Post, the Justice Department traced Berger's Nazi service to an index card found in a sunken ship years after it was mistakenly bombed by the British Royal Air Force in May 1945.
The card apparently documented Berger's work at the Neuengamme concentration camp system.
"What are the odds, you know, of that card having survived . . . and making it to us decades later?" Justice Department prosecutor Eli Rosenbaum told The Post.
The government says Berger was an armed guard at a concentration camp near Meppen, Germany, in 1945. The immigration judge found that the prisoners Berger guarded were held in atrocious conditions and were exploited for forced labor.
He also was accused of guarding prisoners during a forced evacuation to a main camp that took two weeks and left 70 prisoners dead.
Reached by phone, Berger said he did not carry a weapon and said the court's conclusions about his work at the camp were based on "lies," The Post reported.
Berger acknowledged he never requested a transfer from the concentration camp service and that he still gets a pension from Germany, The Post reported.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Related Stories:
© 2023 Newsmax. All rights reserved.