A former concentration camp guard who has lived in America since 1959, partly financed by a pension linked to his wartime service, is facing extradition to Germany for what would be one of the last Nazi war crime trials.
State prosecutors in the northern German town of Celle are investigating Friedrich Karl Berger on suspicion of abetting the murder of 70 prisoners at a satellite camp of the Neuengamme network near Hamburg in 1945.
A US Justice Department official said in March that Mr Berger, 94, was part of an “SS machinery of oppression that kept concentration camp prisoners in atrocious conditions of confinement”. US officials allege that he served at a camp near Meppen in northern Germany where Jews, Poles, Russians, Danes, Dutch, Latvians, French, Italians and political opponents of the Nazis were imprisoned.
In March 1945, when Meppen was abandoned to escape advancing British and Canadian forces, Mr Berger helped to guard prisoners during their evacuation to the main camp. The trek lasted almost two weeks and claimed 70 lives, the officials said.
Mr Berger has been receiving a German pension based on his employment, including his wartime service, US officials said. It is unclear whether this is a normal state pension or a military one.
Read the article by David Crossland in The Australian (from The Times).