A US judge has ordered the deportation of a former Nazi camp guard to Germany, where as a citizen he is still getting a pension for his “wartime service”.<\/p>\n
Immigration judge Rebecca Holt said Friedrich Karl Berger, now 94, had served in the camp where prisoners were held in “atrocious” conditions.<\/p>\n
Mr Berger told the Washington Post newspapers that he had been ordered to work in the camp during World War Two.<\/p>\n
Mr Berger has been living in the US since 1959.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear if Mr Berger, a resident of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, would appeal – a move that could delay his deportation for several years.<\/p>\n
“After 75 years, this is ridiculous. I cannot believe it,” he told the Washington Post newspaper. “You’re forcing me out of my home.”<\/p>\n
Judge Holt ordered the deportation on Thursday after a two-day trial in the city of Memphis, Tennessee.<\/p>\n
In her ruling, she said Mr Berger’s “willing service as an armed guard of prisoners at a concentration camp where persecution took place” constituted assistance in Nazi persecution.<\/p>\n
The judge said he had served in Germany’s Neuengamme concentration camp system, where prisoners were held in “atrocious” conditions and worked “to the point of exhaustion and death”.<\/p>\n
During the trial, Mr Berger admitted he had prevented prisoners from fleeing the camp in Meppen, north-western Germany.<\/p>\n
But he later told the Washington Post that he had been forced to work in the camp, spent a short time there and carried no weapon.<\/p>\n
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