Expelled Nazis got millions in Social Security [View all]

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-EXCITE

By DAVID RISING, RANDY HERSCHAFT and RICHARD LARDNER

OSIJEK, Croatia (AP) — Dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards collected millions of dollars in U.S. Social Security benefits after being forced out of the United States, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The payments, underwritten by American taxpayers, flowed through a legal loophole that gave the U.S. Justice Department leverage to persuade Nazi suspects to leave the U.S. If they agreed to go, or simply fled before deportation, they could keep their Social Security, according to interviews and internal U.S. government records.

Among those receiving benefits were armed SS troops who guarded the network of Nazi camps where millions of Jews perished; a rocket scientist who used slave laborers to advance his research in the Third Reich; and a Nazi collaborator who engineered the arrest and execution of thousands of Jews in Poland.

There are at least four living beneficiaries. They include Martin Hartmann, a former SS guard at the Sachsenhausen camp in Germany, and Jakob Denzinger, who patrolled the grounds at the Auschwitz camp complex in Poland.

FULL story at link.



ADVANCE FOR 9:00 P.M. EDT, SUNDAY OCT. 19 AND THEREAFTER - FILE - In this undated file photo, a machine gun is seen over the parade ground at the Sachsenhausen Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany. An Associated Press investigation found dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards collected millions of dollars in Social Security payments after being forced out of the United States. (AP Photo, File)


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20141020/eu--nazi-social_security-abridged-9dda655f8c.html