German Friedrich Karl Berger, a former Nazi concentration camp guard suspected of "complicity in murder", will finally escape a trial in Germany for lack of "clear evidence", announced Wednesday, March 31, the German justice.

The 95-year-old man had lived since 1959 in Tennessee without anyone knowing his past for many years, before being extradited in mid-February from the United States to Germany.

"After having exhausted all the means of proof, the public prosecutor's office of Celle again dismissed the preliminary proceedings due to the lack of sufficient suspicion", explained in a statement Bernd Kolkmeier, spokesman for the public prosecutor. of this jurisdiction located in Lower Saxony.

Friedrich Karl Berger was suspected by American justice of having been an accomplice in the death of prisoners while he was a guard between January and April 1945 in the concentration camp complex of Neuengamme, south-east of Hamburg (north), and in one of its outer camps near Meppen, in particular during an evacuation operation in March 1945.

Having been working on this case for several years, the Celle public prosecutor's office had already ended the preliminary proceedings against him at the end of November 2020, for lack of clear evidence.

However, he reopened the case when he returned to Germany on February 21 but Friedrich Karl Berger refused to give a testimony in which he would confess his guilt, not allowing the case to be clarified.

Interrogations in the United States

After peaceful years in relative anonymity, Friedrich Karl Berger was then confronted with his past when Nazi-era documents bearing his name and found in 1950 in a sunken ship in the Baltic Sea were used by investigators to find him. .

Years later, he had undergone interrogations in the United States during which he admitted to having been a guard in this camp for a while, however declaring that he had no knowledge of mistreatment of prisoners or of deaths among detainees.

Friedrich Karl Berger felt that he had only obeyed orders.

In recent years, Germany has condemned several former SS and extended to camp guards the charge of complicity in murder, illustrating the increased severity, although considered very late by the victims, of its justice.

A handful of cases are still under study.

With AFP

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