Last update - 00:00 01/10/2007
U.S. seeks to deport man accused of being former Nazi camp guard
By The Associated Press
U.S. authorities have begun deportation proceedings against an 85-year-old man who they say served as a Nazi guard and trained and handled attack dogs at the infamous Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps in Germany, officials said Monday.
The Department of Justice said it has filed a charging document against Paul Henss, a German citizen who lives in the Atlanta suburb of Lawrenceville and who authorities say entered the U.S. in 1955 after hiding his concentration camp service.
The document, filed on Sept. 4 by the Justice Department's Criminal Division's Office of Special Investigations and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Henss joined the Hitler Youth organization in Germany in 1934 as a 12 or 13-year-old boy and joined the Nazi Party in September 1940.
In February 1941, he entered the Waffen SS then volunteered the following year to become an SS dog handler, the document said. From 1942 to 1944 Henss served as a guard at the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps, where he instructed other guards in the use of trained attack dogs to guard prisoners and prevent their escape, authorities said.
SS regulations during Henss' time of service required dogs to be trained to 'bite without mercy' and to literally tear prisoners to pieces if they attempted to escape, the document said.
Henss is not in federal custody, and according to the charging document he admitted on March 13 that he served as an SS guard at Dachau and Buchenwald for two to three months each as a dog handler, but denied having killed people.
"I didn't commit no crimes, I didn't hurt nobody. Otherwise I wouldn't have come to the United States," he said, adding that the Holocaust a catastrophe.
"Everybody in Germany knows that wasn't right," he said.
Henss maintains he fought in Russia. "I didn't join the SS to fight in concentration camps," he said. "Everybody had to do something... Anybody who has anything to do with the concentration camps is guilty automatically," he added.
Henss said that when he came to the U.S. 33 years ago, immigration officials did not ask about his military service in Germany.
"I forgot about the war," he said. "I wanted to leave the war behind me."
He's a good man," said his wife Else. "I don't want to lose him."
The Office of Special Investigations, which handles cases against people accused of being former Nazis, began operations in 1979. Authorities said it has won cases against 106 participants in Nazi crimes.
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