Ex-Nazi Camp Guard Voices Regret Over Killing

Former Nazi death camp guard Martin Bartesch was quoted Saturday as saying he regretted he had shot and killed a fleeing prisoner during World War II but felt no guilt about it.

Bartesch, who came to Austria late last month after he was stripped of his U.S. citizenship, told the daily newspaper Kurier, “Naturally I’m unhappy about the incident. But I fired because I was acting under binding orders and I don’t feel guilty.”

Interior Minister Karl Blecha said last week that Romanian-born Bartesch had shot Austrian resistance fighter Max Ochshorn, a Jew, in 1943 at the Mauthausen concentration camp while serving as a Nazi SS guard.

“It was the first time that I had shot at somebody. I was exactly 17 years old then and I was incredibly frightened of doing something wrong,” said Bartesch.

Didn’t Know Victim

The shooting happened at night, he said. “I didn’t know whom I was shooting at, whether he was a Jew or not.”

Bartesch was arrested after arriving in Austria. But he was released when the authorities discovered they could not deport him back to the United States because of a 1954 pact between Vienna and Washington on emigrating refugees.

Bartesch, who emigrated to the United States in 1955, said that before his deportation he had been the superintendent of a Chicago apartment building where many residents were Jews.

“When it became known that I was being deported, the residents gave me a send-off. There were tears,” he said.

The interview was Bartesch’s first public statement in Austria. Until now he had remained in hiding to avoid reporters, he said.

The case strained relations between Vienna and Washington, with Austria saying it received no warning of Bartesch’s arrival. Bartesch lived many years in Austria but never took its citizenship.