Ex-Nazi prison guard faces deportation from U.S.

LAWRENCEVILLE, Georgia (Reuters) - The United States is seeking to deport an 85-year-old German citizen who has admitted that he served as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp in World War Two, the Justice Department said on Monday.

Paul Henss, a resident of Lawrenceville, Georgia, handled attack dogs that terrorized inmates at the Dachau and Buchenwald Nazi concentration camps between 1942 and 1944, the department said in a charging document filed in the deportation case.

Interviewed at his home after the deportation order was made public, Henss said he trained dogs in 1942 to fight on the Russian front and to guard prisoners but this did not make him a war criminal.

"I didn't do nothing wrong," he told reporters standing in the garage of his suburban home with his distraught wife.

"I didn't know nothing about what they would do with the people, especially the Jews. I didn't know nothing about it and then later on I knew that it was unfair," he said in strongly-accented English.

Tens of thousands of people died both at Dachau and Buchenwald, according to historical records.

Henss, a Nazi Party member, volunteered for guard duty while serving in the Waffen SS, an elite military unit involved in numerous war crimes and mass murders.

Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, said: "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."

While at the camps, Henss oversaw slave laborers and taught other guards to handle attack dogs which were trained to tear prisoners to pieces if they attempted to escape.

Henss admitted his guard service to investigators in March, the document said.

He hid his wartime activities when he moved to the United States in 1955, the Justice Department said, making him eligible for deportation now. A date for a deportation hearing has not yet been set.

U.S. authorities have deported or revoked U.S. citizenship from 106 people for Nazi war crimes since 1979, according to the Justice Department. Another 180 have been denied entry into the United States for involvement in World War II crimes.

(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan in Washington)