An 85-year-old Atlanta man accused of
being a Nazi dog handler has left the U.S. for Germany to avoid
deportation, a federal prosecutor told judge at a deportation hearing
Tuesday.
Paul Henss is alleged to have guarded Nazi concentration camps with attack dogs during World War II.
Federal
authorities claim Henss joined the Nazi Party in 1940, entered the
Waffen SS in 1941 and volunteered the following year to become an SS
dog handler. He served at the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps
from 1942 to 1944.
He trained other guards at the camp to use attack dogs to guard prisoners and prevent their escape.
According
to Associated Press in International Herald Tribune, federal documents
say that during the time of Henss' service, attack dogs were to be
trained "to 'bite without mercy' and to literally tear prisoners to
pieces if they attempted to escape."
In
a sworn statement March 13 Henss admitted that he served as an SS guard
at Dachau and Buchenwald for two to three months each as a dog handler.
Earth Times reports Office of
Special Investigations director Eli M. Rosenbaum saying in a statement:
"The brutal concentration camp system could not have functioned without
the determined efforts of SS men such as Paul Henss, who, with a
vicious attack dog, stood between these victims and the possibility of
freedom."
Under U.S. immigration law, assisting in Nazi persecution of Jews is a crime punishable by deportation.
Henss fled the country nearly a week before his scheduled deportation hearing.
Officials have added his name to a federal watch list preventing him from re-entering the United States.
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