LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- Nazi hunters have tracked a suspected World War II concentration camp guard to Lawrenceville.
Members of the Justice Department's elite Nazi tracking force said Paul Henss, 85, served as a prison guard and attack dog handler at the notorious Dachau and Buchenwald Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany.
"It is not 100% true, what they charge me," said Henss Monday afternoon. Henss appeared confused as he tried to answer a barrage of questions from reporters Monday afternoon.
The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security have asked an immigration judge in Atlanta to deport Henss.
Officials said Henss entered the United States in 1955 after concealing his concentration camp service.
The document says Henss 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.
When asked by a Channel 2 reporter, "Did you see dogs or did you train dogs to attack prisoners who tried to escape?" Henss paused for a while, appeared confused and then said, "Sure, we trained them in Berlin."
Paperwork filed by the Criminal Division's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 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 early 1941, Henss volunteered to serve in the Waffen SS and became an SS dog handler in 1942 after serving in the elite Waffen SS combat unit "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler."?
Investigators also said that Henss taught other concentration camp guards at Dachau and Buchwenwald how to use attack dogs to guard prisoners and prevent their escape.
Henss himself is also accused of personally guarding prisoners and labor details with an attack dog.
"When somebody run away, they supposed to catch them," Henss said. He then said he, "Didn't do anything, the dogs were just trained like that."
"Hundreds of thousands of persons were confined under horrific conditions at Dachau and Buchenwald on the basis of their race, religion, national origin or political opinion,"? said Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division in a release.
"By commencing these proceedings against a man who participated in the victimization of those who were interned there, the Justice Department continues to make good on its pledge to ensure that the United States does not become a sanctuary for human rights violators."?
Paul Henss
"The SS committed mass murder at Dachau and Buchenwald and subjected thousands of inmates to slave labor, starvation, grotesque medical experimentation, and torture,"? said OSI Director Eli M. Rosenbaum, whose office investigated the case.
Henss said he didn't know about the mass extermination of Jews and other prisoners. "This was in 1942, I didn't know nothing about what they were going to do, especially with the Jews, I didn't know nothing about it," Henss told reporters.
"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."?
The case against Henss is the first case in Georgia that the Office of Special Investigation has handled, said Jaclyn Lesch, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington.
No court date has been set for Henss, she said.
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I say let the old man live the rest of his life the way he wants. If you werent tried at Nuremberg then I really dont see whats the point. It sounds like they are trying to make this an issue out of a non issue. If the dude has been an upstanding citizen while in our country, I really dont see the need to try him for some crap that happend when he was all of 18 years old. Really, he was in the damn military under Adolf Hitler, you pretty much did what Himler told you or you were dead. This just doesnt seem all that fair to me.
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