Hitler's Third Reich and World War II in the News is a daily edited review of WWII news, providing thought- provoking collection of hand-picked WW2 information.

Category: Nazi Death Camp Guards  -- See latest WWII news here. See also 'Nazi Hunters and Hunted Nazis', 'Disturbing SS Uniforms', 'Nazi Helmets'.

From Red Army soldier to Nazi guard - John Demjanjuk may stand trial, again
John Demjanjuk has been living in the U.S. for over 50 years. Now a German court want to prosecute him as a Nazi guard - it would not be his first time. 15 years ago Demjanjuk was in an Israeli courtroom: Where he provocatively greeted everybody in Hebrew, and blew kisses. He was acquitted because of "reasonable doubt". -- In 1942 Demjanjuk, a member of the Red Army, became a POW. Millions of Soviet POWs died, and Demjanjuk recalled: "I would have given my soul for a loaf of bread." 1942-1945 he was a member of Trawniki group, "foreign volunteers" who did the Nazis' dirty work. In 1945 Demjanjuk joined the Vlasov Army, a group of Russian volunteers allied with Nazi Germany.     [ spiegel.de :: 2008-11-19 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Spain's National Court to try 4 alleged Nazi guards living in the United States
Spain's National Court will try 4 men accused of being Nazi guards at concentration camps where thousands of Spaniards died. The lawsuit names John Demjanjuk, Anton Tittjung, Josias Kumpf and Johann Leprich - all living in the U.S. - as suspects. It demands that the 4 men be deported to Spain to stand trial for the deaths of Spanish citizens at camps at Flossenberg and Sachsenhausen in Nazi Germany, and Mauthausen in Austria where they allegedly worked as camp guards. 7,000 Spaniards were held at the Mauthausen camp and 4,300 of them perished.     [ thelocal.de :: 2008-07-19 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

American Nazi hunters seek to revoke citizenship of Peter Egner
Peter Egner talked freely about his service as a conscript in the German army. "He was a WWII veteran, like I was a veteran," said his neighbour Russell Wilson. But federal Nazi hunters say Egler has lived a lie, and moved to overturn his US citizenship, saying he was a member of a Nazi death squad responsible for the murders of 17,000 persons as the German Wehrmacht marched east. A complaint says that Egner was not a conscript, but served as a guard and interpreter with the Nazi-run Security Police and Security Service (SPSS) in Belgrade, Serbia (then Yugoslavia) from 1941-1943, when he was wounded.     [ guardian.co.uk :: 2008-07-17 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

4 alleged Nazi camp guards living in U.S. to be charged in Spain?
A human rights group has asked a Spanish court to charge 4 alleged Nazi concentration camp guards and seek their extradition from the U.S. over the deaths of Spanish citizens. The Brussels-based rights organization, Equipo Nizkor, identifies the suspects as John Demjanjuk, Anton Tittjung, Josias Kumpf and Johann Leprich. All 4 face deportation from the U.S. but no country will take them in. The group said it is acting under Spain's principle of universal jurisdiction, which states that war crimes and other heinous offenses can be pursued in Spain even if they have been committed abroad.     [ guardian.co.uk :: 2008-06-25 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

SS Camp Guard Ivan John Demjanjuk could be tried in Germany
A retired auto worker living in the US who is accused of being a SS concentration camp guard could face a court in Germany. Ivan John Demjanjuk, the second-most-wanted Nazi war criminal, allegedly committed dreadful acts of violence on inmates at the Treblinka 1942-1943. Demjanjuk was sentenced to death by an Israeli court in 1988, but his conviction was overturned. Now he could face another trial, now in Germany. The Demjanjuk case could make use of an exception in German law: Normally the German legal system can only prosecute someone if the criminal is German or the crime was committed in Germany.     [ spiegel.de :: 2008-06-20 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Poland drops Nazi war crimes probe against John Demjanjuk
Polish war crimes prosecutors have dropped a probe against John Demjanjuk, an ethnic Ukrainian living in the U.S. dogged by allegations of Nazi war crimes. "The investigation was dropped... due lack of evidence to incriminate Demjanjuk for murder," said Anna Galkiewicz. 20 years ago eyewitnesses identified Demjanjuk as "Ivan the Terrible", one of the torturers at the Treblinka nazi camp. Deported by the US to Israel Demjanjuk was sentenced to death in 1988 but then cleared by Israel's supreme court which used KGB archives to id a different man, Ivan Marchenko, as "Ivan the Terrible".     [ news.com.au :: 2008-05-22 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Nazi guard John Demjanjuk finally loses last US appeal
John Demjanjuk, accused of being a guard at a Nazi death camp, has finally lost his fight to stay in the United States. He moved to the US in the 1950s. He was handed over to Israel in 1986 and sentenced to death, but the ruling was overturned. He returned to the US but was accused of lying on his immigration application about working for the Nazis. The US Supreme Court has now rejected his appeal against deportation. It's unclear if any country is willing to take Demjanjuk in, or prosecute him again. Demjanjuk has insisted he was a prisoner of war with the Nazis, instead of a guard serving under them.     [ bbc :: 2008-05-20 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Court hears appeal of former Death's Head Battalion Nazi guard Anton Geiser
When Anton Geiser applied for an U.S. visa in 1956, he wrote that he was in the "German Army." What he didn't indicate was: He was in the Nazi's elite Death's Head Battalion with orders to "shoot to kill" people in the Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald camps. Geiser, ill with cancer, appealed to remain in the "country I love." On Sept. 14, 1942 - at the age of 16 - he was drafted in the Waffen SS and sent to the Eastern Front. In Jan. 1943, he was sent to Sachsenhausen, where he saw guards shoot a prisoner who had stepped out of line. Geiser was one of about 10,000 Nazis who moved to the U.S. after WW2.     [ philly :: 2008-03-05 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Case closed as female nazi camp guard Erna Wallisch dies
Female death camp guard Erna Wallisch has cheated justice after dying peacefully in a hospital. She lived in obscurity after WW2 until she was listed by Nazi hunters as one of the top Third Reich war criminals stil alive. Wallisch, a guard at the Majdanek death camp from Oct 1942 to Jan 1944, was tracked down to a suburb of Vienna by historian Guy Walters for book Hunting Evil. Under pressure from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and the Polish Institute for National Remembrance (IPN) Austrian authorities agreed to open the case again. Eyewitness Ewa Koszlowska: "She was so hated that people used to warn each other when she was near."     [ wienerzeitung :: 2008-02-22 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Tiny Austrian village Silbertal faces its Nazi past - Mass murderer Josef Vallaster
The mayor of Silbertal, where Ernest Hemingway skied down majestic slopes, has began a project that most Austrians would rather forget: facing the nation's Nazi past. Mayor Willi Saly wants to find out what drove Josef Vallaster to become one of the most brutal camp guards of WWII. He took part in the deaths of 250,000 at the Sobibor and Belzec, and of 20,000 mentally disabled persons in Nartheim. "At first, we couldn't believe that a man from our village could be such a dreadful monster." Saly's mission is unique in a country that has been unwilling to face its Nazi past. Unlike most areas occupied by Third Reich, many Austrians welcomed Germany's annexation in 1938.     [ sfgate :: 2008-02-17 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Canada to hand over convicted Nazi guard Michael Seifert to Italy
Former SS prison guard Michael Seifert was being handed over from Canada to Rome. He will be moved to a military prison near Naples to begin serve his sentence, said military prosecutor Bartolomeo Costantini. Seifert was convicted to life in prison in absentia in 2000 by a military tribunal in Verona on 9 counts of murder, committed while he was an SS guard at a prison transit camp in Bolzano. Seifert, who has lived in Canada since 1951, had unsuccessfully fought efforts by the Canadian authorities to strip him of his citizenship because he hid his past when he moved into the country.     [ iht :: 2008-02-15 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Nazi officer Paul Maria Hafner: Auschwitz was a 10 star hotel
Nazi officer Paul Maria Hafner, who served in nazi camps and on the Eastern Front as a fighting SS man, gives the Hitler salute in Spain where he has hidden for over 60 years. Now he is the subject of a documentary "Hafner's Paradise," by Gunter Schwaiger, which accounts his life in exile and how he draws pensions from 3 countries. Hafner calls the death camp of Auschwitz "a ten star hotel" where "Jews were sent for their own protection. All that stuff about murder is Allied propaganda... I regard Hitler as the greatest man who ever lived, the most important person in the history." He dreams of seeing a "Fourth Reich" and he told to a Dachau survivor: "You survived quite well."     [ dailymail :: 2007-12-12 ]

Frau Erna Wallisch is ranked 7 on the wanted Nazi war criminal list
She looks like a harmless grandmother. But this little old lady has a dark past. Frau Erna Wallisch ranks number 7 on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's list of Nazi war criminals still on the loose. Tracked down by historian Guy Walters for book "Hunting Evil", she lives in an apartment in Vienna. Wallisch joined the Nazi party as a teenager and became a camp guard at the Ravensbruck women's camp - where SOE agent Violette Szabo was among the thousands killed. Oct 1942 - Jan 1944 she was based at Majdanek death camp. Former prisoner Jadwiga Landowska recalled how the then-pregnant Wallisch beat people to death.     [ telegraph.co.uk :: 2007-10-23 :: Nazi hunters & nazis at large ]

Suspected Nazi war criminal Paul Henss found in Atlanta
Nazi hunters have tracked a suspected WWII concentration camp guard Paul Henss to Lawrenceville. Members of the Justice Department's elite Nazi tracking force said he served as a guard and attack dog handler at the Dachau and Buchenwald Camps in Nazi Germany. Henss joined the Hitler Youth organization in 1934 as a 12 or 13yo boy and joined the Nazi Party in Sept 1940. In early 1941, he volunteered to serve in the Waffen SS and became an SS dog handler in 1942 after serving in the elite Waffen SS combat unit Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler. Henss taught other concentration camp guards how to use attack dogs to guard prisoners and prevent their escape.     [ wsbtv :: 2007-10-02 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Nazi SS guard Martin Hartmann leaves U.S.
Martin Hartmann has been a soldier, typesetter, father and friend. The Department of Justice said he was also a war criminal. Hartmann voluntarily left the country Aug. 31, after reaching an agreement to turn over his papers. The decision followed a 2-year investigation into his past as an armed Nazi SS Guard at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. His departure left people in the community in east Mesa stunned. But one man knew his secret: Nathan Gasch had been in Hartmann's home years ago and saw a photo of a man in an SS uniform. The man was Hartmann, and Gasch recognized the uniform because he had been a prisoner in the same camp in the 1944.     [ azcentral :: 2007-09-22 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Female Nazi guard's untold love story - Ravensbrück dog handler
Elfriede Rinkel was a loving Jewish wife. She was also a concentration camp dog handler when women and their children were savaged to death by alsatians for sport. Now a widow living peacefully, how has she evaded justice for 60 years? --- Rinkel had worked as a camp guard and dog handler at Ravensbrück for the last 9 months of the war, when the worst atrocities were committed. Ravensbrück was guarded by women - and these women often committed the worst atrocities. 3,500 German women, mostly under 30, passed through Ravensbrück as guards. Elfriede Rinkel was just 22 when she took up her post as "Hundeführerin", dog handler, on June 15, 1944.     [ timesonline :: 2007-08-07 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Innocent man finally cleared of unfounded allegations of a Nazi Past
The Ukrainian Canadian community has welcomed the announcement that Wasyl Odynsky will not be deported, despite a decade of allegations about his wartime activities. In 2001 Federal Court Judge reaffirmed that Odynsky had never been a Nazi and that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing. Despite that Odynsky still faced the prospect of being deported because it was alleged that he must have misled immigration officials, concealing his role as a sentry at the Trawniki labour camp. Odynsky swore that he was never asked about his wartime service, had been press-ganged into a guard unit, and was never involved in a war crime. He has lived an exemplary life in Canada.     [ brama :: 2007-05-30 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Nazi hunt continues for old ex-guards, most are nobodies in poor health
Anton Geiser, who is battling cancer, is facing a deportation because he was a labor camp guard in a Nazi SS Totenkopf battalion. The government says that makes him part of Nazi atrocities. Critics say hunting down elderly Nazis is a waste of time and money. The Nazi regime decision-makers are dead, former guards who had no influence remain. "The govt is prosecuting the most low-level nobodies who ever served in the German military, and they're making it out to be the last living Nazis." Former Nazi hunter John Loftus sees it differently: "The Nazis in America got away with it. They should have spent their lives in jail or died before a firing squad."     [ pittsburghlive :: 2007-04-15 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Jimmy Carter protected Waffen-SS Nazi Guard
Jimmy Carter sent a note to the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation, interceding on behalf of a Nazi SS Guard. Carter's note is attached to a letter from the daughter of the Nazi SS Guard, asking for them to help the Nazi SS Guard. Mr. Carter sent the letter with the note attached: "To Director, O.S.I. I hope that, in cases like this, that special consideration can be given to affected families for humanitarian reasons. Jimmy Carter." Bartesch admitted that he had voluntarily joined the Waffen SS and had served in the SS Death's Head Division at the Mauthausen camp where many thousands were killed.     [ - :: 2007-01-19 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Josias Kumpf served as an armed Nazi SS guard
A man who served as an armed Nazi SS guard became a U.S. citizen illegally and should be deported. Josias Kumpf admitted that he served as a guard at the Sachsenhausen and Trawniki camps. He was at Trawniki during or shortly after Operation Harvest Festival: a mass execution on Nov. 3, 1943. 7,000-8,000 were gunned down. He denied shooting anyone and said the Nazis threatened to kill him if he did not serve as a guard. His daughter said he suffers from Parkinson: "What are they going to do? Are they going to come here and take him away in handcuffs? He's not well. He can't even stay by himself."     [ jsonline :: 2007-01-05 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

US death camp Nazi guard John Demjanjuk faces deportation
An 85yo man accused of having been a guard at a Nazi death camp has lost an appeal against his deportation from the US to Ukraine. John Demjanjuk can still make a further appeal against ruling. He has denied the allegations and argued he would be tortured if sent back. He migrated to the US in 1951 and was briefly deported to Israel amid a 30-year battle over his past. At the time, he was suspected of having been a camp guard "Ivan the Terrible". But his name was cleared and he was spared the death penalty. The Board said there was no evidence to prove he would be tortured if returned to the Ukraine.     [ bbc :: 2006-12-23 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Exile or mercy for old Nazi guards?
John Kalymon, Johann Leprich and Iwan Mandycz are old men now, hobbled by the same aches that plague many senior citizens. But in the 1940s they helped the Nazi killing machine exterminating millions of people deemed enemies of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. But getting rid of them has created a moral, legal and diplomatic dilemma. Many regard them as harmless old men who were victims, forced to choose between the Nazi juggernaut or death. "In recent years, we've had great difficulty persuading European nations to take these people back," said Eli Rosenbaum.     [ adelaideinstitute.org :: 2006-12-04 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

U.S. frees ex-Nazi camp guard who has no country
Johann Leprich, the former Nazi camp guard who was jailed after agents found him hiding in a secret compartment has been released from custody. And now Leprich is a man without a country. Officials said they freed him after the government failed to find a country willing to accept Leprich. Although officials vowed to continue their 20-year effort to remove him, his lawyer predicted the battle is over. Leprich was drafted into the Hungarian Army. But in 1943, he and other ethnic German men were allowed to transfer to the German Waffen-SS.     [ usatoday :: 2006-10-19 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Blind, no homeland, cannot move: Waffen-SS guard case
The decision to revoke the former Waffen SS camp guard John Hansl's citizenship stands. He is in a wheelchair. He's blind. He needs help getting out of bed. Time is clearly running out. And where would they send him? His only relatives live in the US. Yugoslavia doesn't exist. Croatia, which now includes his former homeland, has no record of his birth. He never lied about his past when he traveled to the US. He committed no atrocities. -- The other side will hold firm, saying he "personally assisted in persecution" by keeping prisoners from escaping. He carried a rifle and was instructed to shoot anyone who tried to flee.     [ desmoinesregister :: 2006-10-04 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Books expose female Nazis likes Irma Grese
Daniel Patrick Brown has written two books: "The Beautiful Beast - The Life and Crimes of SS-Aufseherin Irma Grese" and "The Camp Women - The Female Auxiliaries of the Nazi Concentration Camp System." They have made him an authority on the subject of the nazi female guards. Brown said the female camp guards were called SS Aufseherin, or overseers, and were considered auxiliaries to the SS members who ran the camps. Many of these women were brutal, including Irma Grese, a guard at Ravensbruck and at Bergen-Belsen in 1945, when Anne Frank died there a few weeks before the camp was captured by Allies.     [ dailynews :: 2006-10-03 :: Nazi Women of Third Reich ]

SS Death's Head battalion member in Pennsylvania
A former Nazi camp guard who has lived in Western Pennsylvania for about 50 years was stripped of his citizenship. Anton Geiser has two weeks to hand over his certificate of naturalization, passport and any other documents indicating he is an American citizen. He lied in 1956 about serving in an SS Death's Head battalion. "Anton Geiser's service as an armed SS guard at several Nazi concentration camps helped to ensure that thousands of men and women held prisoner could not escape the brutal conditions of their confinement."     [ pittsburghlive :: 2006-09-30 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Calif. woman admits being a Nazi Guard in Nazi Germany
A woman who admitted she had served as a guard at a concentration camp during World War II was deported to Germany, federal officials said. Prosecutors would not say how they learned about Elfriede Rinkel, but a department said investigators routinely compare guard rosters and other Nazi documents to U.S. immigration records. Rinkel admitted that she worked as a prison guard at the Ravensbrueck camp from June 1944 until the camp was abandoned by the Nazi government in April 1945. She worked with an SS-trained attack dog but was not a member of the Nazi party.     [ sfgate :: 2006-09-20 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

US plans to deport ex-Nazi SS Death's Head guard
US has asked a judge to deport a former SS member who admitted serving as a guard during a Nazi massacre in German-occupied Poland in World War II. Josias Kumpf has admitted that as an SS Death's Head guard at Trawniki he "was watching them shoot some people" and that if any were still alive, his instructions were to "shoot them to kill." On November 3, 1943 when 8,000 persons were killed in a single day at the Trawniki labour camp. The 1943 massacres, were cynically code-named Operation Harvest Festival by the Nazis.     [ expatica :: 2006-07-18 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Two Canadians accused of being Third Reich Nazi guards
Josef Furman of Edmonton and Jura Skomatchuk of St. Catharines, Ontario, could both have their Canadian citizenship revoked and be deported if they lose their cases. Historian told court Skomatchuk's name appeared on transfer lists several times, suggesting he was trained as an armed guard at the Nazi Trawniki camp before being transferred to serve at a number of camps. No evidence connects Skomatchuk directly to any war crimes, but he noted the guards were known for "brutality you can't possibly describe."     [ ctv :: 2006-06-09 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Appeals Court refuses Ex-Nazi guard US Citizenship
A federal appeals court turned aside an immigrant's efforts to retain his U.S. citizenship, saying there was ample evidence that Mandycz hid his past as a Nazi guard. Mandycz has denied working at the camp, but authorities say he was inducted into the Guard Forces, an auxiliary of the German SS, in Poland in 1943. SS and German police massacred about 14,000 prisoners on Nov. 4, 1943, while Mandycz worked as a guard at Poniatowa. Office of Special Investigations started hunting down former Nazis in the US in 1979. Since then it has won more than 100 cases and prevented more than 170 people with Nazi backgrounds from entering the country.     [ sfgate :: 2006-05-23 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

Former SS guard loses appeal
A man who served as a guard at Nazi concentration camps during WWII has lost his appeal, clearing the way for his deportation. Kumpf admitted that he had stood guard at the perimeter of the Trawniki Training Camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, and the Sachsenhausen near Berlin. Kumpf said he was forced to enter the Waffen SS, and he never hurt or killed anyone. The government claimed that Kumpf was a guard at Trawniki in Nov 1943, when German soldiers shot 7,000 prisoners. Trucks with speakers played loud music to drown out the victims' screams. Kumpf said he arrived at Trawniki after the massacre.     [ journaltimes :: 2006-02-26 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

New drive to deport Waffen-SS soldiers and Auschwitz guards
Hundreds of alleged Nazi war criminals living in Britain face deportation under tough new immigration laws. An eight-strong team from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch is examining files containing the names of more than 200 suspects understood to be in hiding or living under false names. They include at least 75 Auschwitz guards and former members of the 14th Waffen-SS Galician division, which has been blamed for atrocities. 6,000 of them were allowed to settle as contract labour in Britain at the end of the war and many emigrated, mostly to North America. Only one man, Anthony Sawoniuk, has been prosecuted here for Nazi war crimes.     [ independent :: 2006-02-05 :: Nazi hunters & nazis at large ]

Second former Nazi guard from St. Louis area loses his US citizenship
A former Nazi death camp guard living in St. Louis lost his bid to remain a U.S. citizen. It was a key step toward a deportation that faces a big hitch: His native Romania has a law against taking him. Adam Friedrich, 83, served as a guard in Hitler's Waffen SS during World War II. A second former Nazi guard from the area, Michael Negele, 85, who lives in St. Peters, lost his final deportation appeal last year but is still here because his home country also is Romania.     [ bbc :: 2005-10-18 :: Nazi Death Camp Guards ]

See also

'Nazi Hunters and Hunted Nazis'

'Disturbing SS Uniforms'

'Nazi Helmets'.

Although the articles linked from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich 1933-1945 and World War II in the News are reviewed and specially selected, they do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, who is not responsible for the content of any external sites. This service is © Joni Nuutinen 2005-2008. All rights reserved.