‘ACTS OF PERSECUTION’

Former Nazi Guard Living in Tennessee Is Booted to Germany

Friedrich Karl Berger admitted he guarded prisoners so they could not escape a concentration camp near Meppen, Germany.

ICE deported a 95-year-old former Nazi armed guard from Tennessee back to Germany on Friday. Friedrich Karl Berger was given a deportation order in February 2020 after a court found he participated in Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution. He worked at a camp in the Neuengamme Concentration Camp system in 1945 near Meppen, Germany. Prisoners at the camp included Jews, Poles, Russians, Danes, Dutch, Latvians, French, Italians, and political opponents. Berger admitted to the court in 2020 that he guarded prisoners at the camp so they couldn’t escape overnight, as well as during a two-week trip when Nazi leaders evacuated the camp as British and Canadian forces approached. Berger said he never asked to leave his position as an armed guard, and he’s still receiving a German pension, which includes payment for his “wartime service.”