Former Nazi prison guard, 95, deported from US to Germany
American authorities have deported a 95-year-old man who acknowledged working as a guard in a Nazi concentration camp.
The US immigration and customs enforcement agency (ICE) said Friedrich Karl Berger, a German citizen, was sent back to Germany earlier this month for serving as a guard of a Neuengamme concentration camp subcamp in 1945. The case was investigated by the US department of justice.
Berger was ordered to be expelled by a court in Memphis, Tennessee in February 2020, but will not face trial in Germany because prosecutors there dropped the case against him over lack of evidence.
According to an ICE statement, Berger served at the sub-camp near Meppen, Germany. While there, prisoners – including Russian, Polish, Dutch, Jewish and others – were held in atrocious conditions and were ruthlessly worked to the point of exhaustion and death.
Berger admitted that he guarded prisoners to prevent them from escaping.
He also accompanied prisoners on the forced evacuation of the camp that resulted in the deaths of 70 prisoners.
He has admitted serving as a guard for a few weeks near the end of the war, but insists that he did not observe any abuse or killings, according to media reports in the US.
Berger had been living in the US since 1959.
Police are investigating after an award-winning bird hide in Scotland’s most visited national nature reserve was destroyed in a fire thought to have been started deliberately.
Naturescot’s popular Mill Hide on the shore at Loch Leven National Nature Reserve in Kinross- shire, was completely gutted in the blaze, which happened between 7- 8pm on Thursday. The hide, which was built on the edge of Kinross in 2011, has won awards for its architectural design.