Dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards collected millions of dollars in U.S. Social Security benefits after being forced out of the United States and lived comfortably in Europe.
Last updated at 1044 pm CDT
Shocking: US Government's Nazi Dumping Policy Lead To Dozens Of Alleged Nazi War Criminals, Including Death Camp Guards, Getting US Social Security Benefits
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards collected millions of dollars in U.S. Social Security benefits after being forced out of the United States and lived comfortably in Europe.
An investigation by the Associated Press has found that dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS death camp guards collected millions of dollars in US Social Security benefits – after they were forced out of the US by the government.
Social Security benefits were used as leverage by the US Justice Department to convince alleged Nazi war criminals to leave the US. Those who agreed to leave voluntarily or fled before being deported were allowed to keep their Social Security benefits.
Among those alleged Nazi war criminals who left the US and continued receiving Social Security benefits were death camp guards, a rocket scientist who used slave laborers, and a Nazi collaborator who orchestrated the arrest and murder of thousands of Polish Jews.
At least four of these Nazis are still living, including Martin Hartmann, a former SS guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, and Auschwitz death camp guard Jakob Denzinger.
At least 38 of the 66 alleged war criminals forced out of the US kept their Social Security benefits, the AP found.
The deals with the alleged war criminals were made to allow the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which hunted Nazi war criminals, to avoid long involved deportation hearings while increasing the number of Nazis expelled from the US.
The State Department objected to the OSI's policy of – but largely because it essentially dumped Nazis into friendly European countries without notice to or agreement from those US allies.
In 1997, the Social Security Administration lashed out at OSI over its misuse of Social Security benefits and European allies who had Nazis dumped on their soil by OSI were outrgaed.
“It was not upfront, it was not transparent, it was not a legitimate process. This was not the way America should behave. We should not be dumping our refuse, for lack of a better word, on friendly states,” James Hergen, who was an assistant legal adviser at the US State Department from 1982 until 2007, told the AP.
Neal Sher, the former director of OSI, insisted the US State Department cared more about diplomatic relationships with European allies than holding Nazi war criminals accountable.
As objections from the State Department, the Social Security Administration and European governments mounted, the OSI aborted the benefits for self-deportation policy. However, the Nazis who fled the US under that policy continued to receive Social Security benefits, and those who are still living still receive them every month.
US Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York State who is a senior member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told the AP she would sponsor legislation to end the benefits.