A former Nazi concentration-camp guard was deported from Wisconsin to Austria on Thursday, despite objections from his lawyer that the guard was simply present at the camp but committed no acts of persecution.
Prosecutors said 83-year-old Josias Kumpf served as a guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, the Trawniki labor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland and slave labor sites in occupied France.
US investigators alleged that he participated in a 1943 mass shooting in Poland in which 8,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered in pits at Trawniki in a single day.
“Josias Kumpf, by his own admission, stood guard with orders to shoot any surviving prisoners who attempted to escape an SS massacre that left thousands of Jews dead,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita Glavin said in a statement.
Peter Rogers, Kumpf’s immigration attorney, said Kumpf was stationed at Trawniki, “but he never laid a finger on anyone, he never shot at anyone.”
“In fact, even the government never asserted that he took any particular action,” Rogers said. “The court found his mere presence at a place where admittedly horrible, horrible things happened, was sufficient to find him a persecutor.”
Justice Department spokesman Ian McCaleb referred attempts for comment to a 2006 ruling by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.
“Kumpf’s personal presence functioned to discourage escape attempts and maintain order over the prisoners ... [H]e presided over and witnessed the torture and murder of helpless people,” it said.
Investigators say Kumpf joined the SS Death’s Head guard forces in 1942.
Kumpf was born in what is now Serbia, immigrated to the US from Austria in 1956, settled in Wisconsin, and became a US citizen in 1964.
A federal judge in Milwaukee had previously found Kumpf didn’t disclose he had been an SS guard because he feared it would disqualify him when he applied for a visa to the US.
In a 2003 interview, Kumpf said he was taken from his home in Yugoslavia as a 17-year-old and forced to serve as a guard, but he didn’t participate in any atrocities.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of