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Formerly Neuengamme concentration camp
Photo: NurPhoto / Getty Images
The investigation against the former concentration camp guard Friedrich Karl Berger, who had been deported to Germany from the USA, on suspicion of being an accessory to murder, has been discontinued.
The 95-year-old was charged with contributing to death as a security guard in the Neuengamme concentration camp, Meppen-Dalum or Meppen-Versen subcamp between January 28, 1945 and April 4, 1945, in particular by guarding a march to evacuate the subcamps many prisoners to have done.
In the last months of the Second World War, Berger had been assigned to the SS by the Navy to guard so-called satellite camps of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Emsland, Lower Saxony.
Forced laborers who had to build military installations were housed in these camps.
Almost 400 prisoners died there or on so-called evacuation marches.
No sufficient suspicion
The public prosecutor's office had already closed the investigation at the end of November 2020 because there was no sufficient reason to suspect a crime.
After the accused had been deported from the USA to Germany on February 20 and signaled that he was fundamentally ready to give evidence, the investigation was resumed in order to give the accused a fair hearing.
A defense attorney stated after consulting his client that he was not available for a responsible questioning as a suspect, according to a statement from the public prosecutor on Wednesday.
After exhausting all the evidence, the Public Prosecutor's Office closed the investigation again for lack of sufficient suspicion.
"I was ordered to go there"
The German had lived in the USA since 1959 - his past was unknown for decades.
According to the US authorities, Berger has admitted that he was guarding prisoners in a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg.
But he emphasized that he had only carried out the orders of his superiors.
"I was 19 years old," he said at a trial, "I was ordered to go there." A judge in the United States ordered his deportation.
The German judiciary started the investigation against Berger in 2020, but closed it at the end of 2020 due to insufficient suspicion.
At that time it was said: "The granted guarding of prisoners in a concentration camp, which was not used for the systematic killing of the prisoners, is not sufficient as such to prove the crime."
For the legal assessment of the role of former security guards in Nazi concentration camps, the purpose of the camp is decisive, because today only complicity in murder can be punished.
Other offenses such as manslaughter, assault or deprivation of liberty are statute-barred.
Because of membership of the guards, charges are only possible in camps that were systematically operated as death or extermination camps.
Otherwise, the accused must be able to prove that they were actually complicit in murder.
ala / AFP / dpa
