With exquisite historical timing, the federal Board of Immigration Appeals has denied a Nazi concentration camp guard’s effort to fight deportation back to Germany. Friedrich Karl Berger is 95 and has illegally been living in Tennessee since lying his way into the U.S. in 1959. In February, an immigration judge ordered the green card holder expelled. He’ll now lose his Social Security and hopefully soon his adopted homeland. The Department of Justice announced Herr Berger’s failed appeal Thursday evening, hours before Friday’s 75th anniversary of the opening of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. The German city, once home to the Nazi Party’s biggest rallies, is synonymous with the Nuremberg principles, established by the U.S., Soviet, British and French Allies, that it is illegal to obey an illegal order, a crime to follow a criminal command.
via nydailynews: Auf Wiedersehen: Another Nazi is getting kicked out of America
siehe auch: Former Nazi concentration camp guard removal order from the US upheld. Friedrich Karl Berger, a Tennessee resident, served as an armed guard in the Neuengamme prisoners’ concentration camp during the winter of 1945. A removal order of a former Nazi concentration camp guard has been upheld by the US Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), after his appeal was rejected, according to The US Department of Justice. Friedrich Karl Berger, a resident of Tennessee, served as an armed guard in the Neuengamme prisoners’ concentration camp. The court found, along with Berger’s admission, that he guarded the prisoners at the Neuengamme sub-camp near Meppen, Germany, to make sure the prisoners did not escape during their workday there. The prisoners worked “to the point of exhaustion and death” and they were kept in “atrocious” conditions during the winter of 1945, according to the appeal. When the camp was abandoned, it was found that Berger helped guard the prisoners in their forceful evacuation to the Neuengamme main camp, a trip which claimed the lives of about 70 prisoners.
A US immigration judge issued an opinion after a two-day trial in February finding Berger removable from the United States under the 1978 Holtzman Amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act, because his “willing service as an armed guard of prisoners at a concentration camp where persecution took place” constituted assistance in Nazi-sponsored persecution.
“Berger’s willing service as an armed guard at a Nazi concentration camp cannot be erased and will not be ignored,” said Acting Assistant Attorney-General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the commencement of the Nuremberg trials of the defeated Nazi regime’s , this case shows that the passage of time will not deter the department from fulfilling the moral imperative of seeking justice for the victims of their heinous crimes,” he added; Removal Order Upheld Against Tennessee Man Who Served as Nazi Concentration Camp Guard During WWII. The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) has dismissed the appeal of Tennessee resident Friedrich Karl Berger, a German citizen who was ordered removed from the United States earlier this year on the basis of his service in Nazi Germany in 1945 as an armed guard of concentration camp prisoners in the Neuengamme Concentration Camp system (Neuengamme). “Berger’s willing service as an armed guard at a Nazi concentration camp cannot be erased and will not be ignored,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “On the eve of tomorrow’s 75th anniversary of the commencement of the Nuremberg trials of the surviving leaders of the defeated Nazi regime, this case shows that the passage of time will not deter the department from fulfilling the moral imperative of seeking justice for the victims of their heinous crimes.” “Berger was an active participant in one of the darkest chapters in human history. He attempted to shed his nefarious past to come to America and start anew, but thanks to the dedication of those at the Department of Justice and Homeland Security Investigations, the truth was revealed,” said Deputy Assistant Director Louis A. Rodi III of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) National Security Investigations Division, which oversees the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center. “War criminals and violators of human rights will not be allowed to evade justice and find safe haven here.” The BIA upheld a Memphis, Tennessee, Immigration Judge’s Feb. 28, 2020, decision that Berger was removable under the 1978 Holtzman Amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act because his “willing service as an armed guard of prisoners at a concentration camp where persecution took place” constituted assistance in Nazi-sponsored persecution. The court found that Berger served at a Neuengamme sub-camp near Meppen, Germany, and that the prisoners there included “Jews, Poles, Russians, Danes, Dutch, Latvians, French, Italians, and political opponents” of the Nazis. The largest groups of prisoners were Russian, Dutch and Polish civilians.
Von <a href=”//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tolanor” title=”User:Tolanor”>Sören Brandes</a> – <span class=”int-own-work” lang=”de”>Eigenes Werk</span>, CC BY 2.5, Link