US deports female Nazi camp guard to Germany

20 September 2006

WASHINGTON – US authorities have deported an 84-year-old German woman who guarded female prisoners at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.

Elfriede Lina Rinkel, a German national, served at the Ravensbrueck camp north of Berlin from June 1944 until it was abandoned in spring 1945 as World War II ended, the department said.

US prosecutors charged that Rinkel, who lived in San Francisco, used a trained attack dog to carry out guard duty at Ravensbrueck and concealed her concentration camp duty when she came to the United States from Germany in 1959.

At Ravensbrueck, female Nazi SS guards forced inmates to march to and from slave labour sites each day, guarding them while they performed grueling manual work. The Nazis opened the concentration camp for women in 1939, but about 20,000 men were also sent there.

Up to 50,000 inmates died at Ravensbrueck, many from hunger and disease. Others died in grisly Nazi medical experiments, the camp’s gas chambers or forced evacuation marches at the end of the war.

In a settlement with US authorities, Rinkel admitted that she served as a guard at Ravensbrueck, the Justice Department said.

She was born July 14, 1922 in Leipzig, Germany, according to Nazi- era documents that listed her under her maiden name, Elfriede Huth.

US federal law requires the removal of anyone who aided in Nazi- sponsored persecution. Rinkel was given a September 30 deadline to leave the US and has already returned to Germany, justice officials said.

DPA

Subject: German news