25 September 2007
A judge in the United States has revoked the US citizenship of a former SS guard, who since left the country for Germany. Martin Hartmann, 88, who formerly lived in Arizona, served as an armed SS guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin during World War II. In a settlement agreement, Hartmann admitted that he served in the SS Death's Head Guard Battalion and consented to having his citizenship revoked by US district judge Emmet Sullivan. Hartmann was born in Romania and emigrated to the United States in 1955. He became a US citizen in 1961. “This result reflects the Justice Department’s unwavering commitment to ensuring that those who helped the Nazi regime carry out its genocidal plans find no sanctuary in America,” assistant attorney-general Alice Fisher said in a statement.
It also emerged that a Jewish Holocaust survivor lived next door to Hartmann. Nathan Gasch said that when Martin Hartmann moved into the retirement complex four years ago he noticed a picture of his neighbor in an SS uniform on the wall. Gasch said he was shocked but that he never reported the incident. The truth about his past was uncovered in a two-year investigation by the Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), a department created in 1979 to pursue war criminals.
Tens of thousands of prisoners died at the Sachsenhausen camp, where inmates were used for forced labour and subjected to medical experiments and torture.