Deported Nazi war criminals still collecting U.S. Social Security

Deported Nazi war criminals still collecting U.S. Social Security

Loophole in law allowed millions of dollars in payments after they left the country

By David Rising, Randy Herschaft and Richard Lardner, The Associated Press Posted: Oct 19, 2014 9:00 PM ET Last Updated: Oct 19, 2014 9:00 PM ET

http://i.cbc.ca/1.2805398.1413761866...l-security.jpgJakob Denzinger, seen in this July 28, 2014 photo, looks from his apartment window in Osijek, eastern Croatia. Denzinger is among dozens of death camp guards and suspected Nazi war criminals who collected millions of dollars in Social Security payments despite being forced out of the United States. (Darko Bandic/Associated Press)

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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.

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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 labourers 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, including 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.

Moved to Berlin

Hartmann moved to Berlin in 2007 from Arizona just before being stripped of his U.S. citizenship. Denzinger fled to Germany from Ohio in 1989 after learning denaturalization proceedings against him were underway. He soon resettled in Croatia and now lives in a spacious apartment on the right bank of the Drava River in Osijek.

Denzinger would not discuss his situation when questioned by an AP reporter; Denzinger's son, who lives in the U.S., confirmed his father receives Social Security payments and said he deserved them.

'It's absolutely outrageous that Nazi war criminals are continuing to receive Social Security benefits'- Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney of New York

The deals allowed the Justice Department's former Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations, to skirt lengthy deportation hearings and increased the number of Nazis it expelled from the U.S.

But internal U.S. government records obtained by the AP reveal heated objections from the State Department to OSI's practices. Social Security benefits became tools, U.S. diplomatic officials said, to secure agreements in which Nazi suspects would accept the loss of citizenship and voluntarily leave the United States.

"It's absolutely outrageous that Nazi war criminals are continuing to receive Social Security benefits when they have been outlawed from our country for many, many, many years," said U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, a senior Democratic member of the House oversight and government reform committee. She said she plans to introduce legislation to close the loophole.

http://i.cbc.ca/1.2805393.1413763968...l-security.jpg
Martin Hartmann reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2007 to return to Germany when it was found out he had been a Nazi SS guard in the Second World War. (National Archives and Records Administration/Associated Press)

Since 1979, the AP analysis found, at least 38 of 66 suspects removed from the country kept their Social Security benefits.

The Social Security Administration expressed outrage in 1997 over the use of benefits, the documents show, and blowback in foreign capitals reverberated at the highest levels of government.

Austrian authorities were furious upon learning after the fact about a deal made with Martin Bartesch, a former SS guard at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. In 1987, Bartesch landed, unannounced, at the airport in Vienna.

Two days later, under the terms of the deal, his U.S. citizenship was revoked.

The Romanian-born Bartesch, who had immigrated to the U.S. in 1955, was suddenly stateless and Austria's problem. Bartesch continued to receive Social Security benefits until he died in 1989.

"It was not upfront, it was not transparent, it was not a legitimate process," said James Hergen, an assistant legal adviser at the U.S. State Department from 1982 until 2007. "This was not the way America should behave. We should not be dumping our refuse, for lack of a better word, on friendly states."

Diplomatic niceties

Neal Sher, a former OSI director, said the State Department cared more about diplomatic niceties than holding former members of Adolf Hitler's war machine accountable.
Amid the objections, the practice known as "Nazi dumping" stopped. But the benefits loophole wasn't closed.

Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said in an emailed statement that Social Security payments never were employed to persuade Nazi suspects to depart voluntarily.

The Social Security Administration refused the AP's request for the total number of Nazi suspects who received benefits and the dollar amounts of those payments. Spokesman William "BJ" Jarrett said the agency does not track data specific to Nazi cases.

A further barrier, Jarrett said, is that there is no exception in U.S. privacy law that "allows us to disclose information because the individual is a Nazi war criminal or an accused Nazi war criminal."

The department also declined to make the acting commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, or another senior agency official available for an interview.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder and head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said the loophole should be closed.

"Someone receiving an American pension could live very well in Europe or wherever they settled," Hier said. "We, in effect, were rewarding them. It didn't make any sense."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/deporte...rity-1.2805388

House votes to cut off Social Security to Nazis

BY DAVID LIGHTMAN
MCCLATCHY WASHINGTON BUREAU
12/03/2014 8:46 AM

http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-wo...0REICHSTAG.JPG

Nazi party members salute during an assembly March 18, 1938 in Berlin. AP

WASHINGTON Nothing unifies Washington like the Nazis, even if it takes a while.

After 15 years of largely rejected complaints to the federal bureaucracy, the House of Representatives voted 420-0 Tuesday to deny federal benefits to Nazi suspects after learning that many were receiving Social Security checks.

Although at least one member of the House had been trying unsuccessfully to turn off the checks for years, Congress was prodded to act by anAssociated Press investigation in October that found “dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards who collected millions of dollars in Social Security payments after being forced out of the United States.”

Social Security benefits end if someone is deported because they participated in Nazi persecutions, according to the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax legislation.

However, the committee said, Nazi suspects could continue to get benefits if the Justice Department found them to be denaturalized, or stripped of their citizenship. They also continue collecting if they voluntarily renounced their citizenship and left the country to avoid formal deportation proceedings.

The AP found at least 38 of 66 suspects “removed from the United States kept their Social Security benefits.”

“The alleged Nazi criminals left the U.S. voluntarily,” Justice spokesman Peter Carr told McClatchy. “And in no case did the Justice Department advocate on any alleged Nazi criminal’s behalf so that the defendant could retain retirement benefits or agree not to seek any legally available means to revoke the benefits.”

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who’s been trying to remedy the situation for at least 15 years, hoped the AP report would finally help get people’s attention.

“This is certainly a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars,” she wrote this fall to the Justice Department and the Social Security Administration seeking an investigation.

Maloney’s office was still awaiting a response Tuesday.

But the legislative wheels began turning fast. Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Leonard Lance, R-N.J., joined Maloney to introduce legislation declaring Nazi war criminals ineligible for federal benefits.

Similar legislation was introduced in the Senate.

Groups promoting Jewish and Social Security interests weighed in.

“The United States should not be lending material support to individuals whose crimes were so egregious that a new word had to be coined to describe them: Genocide,” wrote Jason Isaacson, director of government and international affairs at AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organization.

Tuesday, the House engaged in a fast, efficient debate and vote.

Lance called the practice “sickening and morally wrong.” Lawmakers bemoaned the “loophole” that’s allowed the practice.

“Allowing payments to continue is an inexcusable insult to those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis,” said Social Security Subcommittee Chairman Sam Johnson, R-Texas.

What happens next is unclear. The Senate is expected to pass the bill, though no timetable has been set.

This issue surfaced in the 1990s, when the Clinton administration considered ending the practice. Congress tried to get involved, but its effort went nowhere. AP reported the Justice Department was reluctant to support any legislation.

Then came this fall’s AP report, reviving interest and offering new momentum.

Major Jewish organizations pledged support. At the Social Security Administration, spokesman William “BJ’ Jarrett said, “We don’t believe these individuals should be getting Social Security benefits, and the agency is available and ready to provide technical assistance to proposals that would close this loophole.”

The bill approved Tuesday would:
– Stop benefit payments to those denaturalized because of participation in Nazi persecutions or who voluntarily renounced their citizenship as part of a settlement with the Justice Department related to their Nazi activity.
– Assure that those ineligible for Social Security benefits because of their Nazi activity don’t get spouse benefits because they’re married to a Social Security or Supplemental Security Income beneficiary.
– Require the attorney general to certify to the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees that Social Security has been told of all those whose benefits should be terminated because of Nazi activity. The Social Security commissioner would have to certify that benefits were terminated.

Email: dlightman@mcclatchydc.com; Twitter: @lightmandavid.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-wo...le4257367.html

Social Security yanked from deported Nazis

By The Associated Press
Thursday, Dec. 18, 2014, 7:51 p.m.
Updated 50 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Thursday capped a swift and forceful response to an Associated Press investigation by signing into law a measure that bars suspected Nazi war criminals from receiving Social Security benefits.

AP's investigation — the impetus for the No Social Security for Nazis Act — found that dozens of former Nazis collected millions of dollars in retirement benefits after they were forced to leave the United States.

Recipients ranged from the SS guards who patrolled the Third Reich's network of camps where millions of Jews died, to a rocket scientist who helped develop the V-2 rocket that Nazi Germany used to attack London.

Since 1979, at least 38 of 66 suspects removed from the United States kept their Social Security benefits.

The speed with which the legislation moved underscores the outrage that the AP's findings triggered among lawmakers on Capitol Hill — and taxpayers. The House unanimously approved the bill Dec. 2, and the Senate passed it by voice vote just two days later.

Mike King, a Vietnam veteran and a retired police officer in Baton Rouge, gets a monthly Social Security check of $900 — less than half of what he could be getting based on his years in the workforce. His benefits are reduced because of a rule that docks retirees who simultaneously collect a public pension.

It's “appalling,” he said, that former Nazis collected benefits when he and others in his position are forced to accept less.

“It is a slap in the face, not only to every American citizen but to every American veteran,” King said.

Many former Nazis got into the United States after the war by lying about their pasts and eventually became citizens.

The law terminates Social Security for those stripped of their citizenships because of their participation in Nazi persecutions during World War II. U.S. law previously mandated a higher threshold — a final order of deportation — before a person's Social Security benefits could be terminated.

“It is a slap in the face, not only to every American citizen but to every American veteran,” King said.

The law terminates Social Security payments for individuals stripped of their American citizenships because of their participation in Nazi persecutions during World War II. U.S. law previously mandated a higher threshold — a final order of deportation — before a person's Social Security benefits could be terminated.

By lowering the threshold to loss of citizenship, a step known as denaturalization, the bill effectively shuts a loophole that for years had allowed suspected Nazis to continue receiving benefits even after being expelled from the U.S. for their roles in Third Reich's atrocities.

AP found that since 1979 at least 38 of 66 suspects removed from the United States kept their Social Security benefits. Many of these former Nazis got in to the United States after the war by lying about their pasts and eventually became U.S. citizens.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and an outspoken advocate for closing the loophole, said he felt vindicated.

“I'm delighted and I think it's the right thing to do,” he said in a telephone interview from his office in Los Angeles.

“As I've said before, for those who say it's a form of collective punishment that also punishes their families, that's the problem of the Nazi who lied about his past and not our problem.”

Among those whose benefits will be cut off because of the new law are Jakob Denzinger, a former Auschwitz guard, and Martin Hartmann, a former guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany. Their cases were described in AP's investigation, which was published in October.

Denzinger, who owned a successful plastics business in Akron, Ohio, fled the U.S. in 1989 as the Justice Department prepared to denaturalize him. AP located him in Croatia, where he was living comfortably and receiving a Social Security payment of about $1,500 each month.

Hartmann, who was living in Berlin and also collecting Social Security, left the U.S. in 2007, just before a federal court issued an order to revoke his citizenship.

The Justice Department wanted the loophole retained because it gave the department leverage to convince Nazi suspects to leave the country, according to AP's investigation. If they signed a settlement agreement with the department, or simply fled the United States before being deported, their Social Security payments would keep coming. They'd lose their citizenships, but keep their benefits.

That meant the Justice Department could expel Nazis relatively quickly to countries where they would be prosecuted. Many of the suspects were aging and the department didn't want them to die in the United States before they stood trial.

Read more: http://triblive.com/usworld/nation/7...#ixzz3MJDliHnr