US Deports Former Nazi Guard to Austria

Concentration camp guard can't be prosecuted there

(NEWSER) - Austria says there’s no way it can prosecute Josias Kumpf, the 83-year-old ex-Nazi guard the US shipped its way yesterday, Reuters reports. “We have always pointed out to the United States that he cannot be charged here,” said an Austrian justice ministry spokeswoman. Kumpf has admitted to taking part in the murder of 8,000 Jews in the Trawniki labor camp—part of a larger killing spree that killed 42,000 at three camps—but he was under 20 at the time. More»

Deportation to Germany, trial now await alleged Nazi

(NEWSER) - Alleged Nazi guard John Demjanjuk, 89, will not seek another review of his case by the Supreme Court after the first was dismissed without comment, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. The concession paves the way for the Ohio man’s deportation to Germany, where he is charged as an accessory to 29,000 World War II murders. An appeal “wouldn’t get us anywhere,” Demjanjuk’s lawyer said today. “We have done everything we could.” More»

(AP) - An immigration judge today revoked John Demjanjuk's stay of deportation to Germany, clearing the way for the retired autoworker to be sent to Germany to face charges of being a Nazi death camp guard. The 89-year-old suburban Cleveland man, who came to America after World War II, is accused in a German arrest warrant of 29,000 counts of acting as an accessory to murder at a death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. More»

(NEWSER) - A retired Ohio autoworker born in Ukraine is facing charges in the murder of 29,000 Jews during World War II, the AP reports. German authorities allege John Demjanjuk was a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp in Poland between March and September 1943. Demjanjuk, 88, maintains his innocence. He says he fought with the Russian army and was captured by the Germans in 1942. More»

Rudolf Brazda was last known survivor of persecution over homosexuality

(AP) - Rudolf Brazda, believed to be the last surviving person who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp because of his homosexuality, died yesterday at age 98. Brazda was sent to Buchenwald in 1942 and held there until its liberation by US forces in 1945. Nazi Germany declared homosexuality an aberration that threatened the German race, and convicted some 50,000 homosexuals as criminals. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 gay men were deported to concentration camps, where few survived. More»