U.S. Seeks to Deport Suspected Nazi Death Camp Guard

The U.S. Justice Department initiated deportation proceedings Tuesday against a retired factory worker from La Puente, alleging that he was a guard at the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, where as many as 4 million people were killed during World War II.

Authorities said that Josef Eckert, 73, a native of what is now Yugoslavia, served in the German SS from 1943 through 1945, and “assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution” of Auschwitz prisoners, who were predominantly Jewish.

Neal M. Sher, director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations in Washington, would not detail what specifically Eckert is suspected of having done as an enlisted man in the German army. “But we don’t file a case against somebody unless we can prove it,” he said.

Sher said Eckert was notified Monday of the Justice Department’s intent to deport him, which could take years if he chooses to oppose the move.

Eckert could not be located for comment Tuesday. No one appeared at his modest, well-kept three-bedroom home, where visitors are greeted with a cheery drawing of Santa Claus taped to the front door.

Neighbors, however, said Eckert in the past has tearfully recounted to them his wartime experiences with the SS, explaining that he was forced to join what an official at the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies described as “the most murderous” unit in the German army.

Government records indicate that Eckert was a member of the Totenkopf-Sturmbann (Death’s Head Battalion) at Auschwitz and at its Kattowitz and Gleiwitz subcamps. Slave laborers--as well as infants and the elderly--were tortured, hanged, shot and gassed at the system of camps outside Krakow in Nazi-occupied southern Poland.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center in West Los Angeles, said Eckert’s unit was responsible for guarding all German concentration camps, as well as machine-gunning hundreds of surrendering British troops during the German invasion of France in 1940.

“While we can rejoice in the likelihood that he will be deported, I think it remains to be seen whether the place he will be deported to will place him on trial,” Hier said. “It remains a question of whether anything will really happen to him.”

By law, a person facing deportation can stipulate the country to which he would prefer to be sent, Sher said. Eckert, who is not a U.S. citizen and may not hold citizenship in any country, has not yet formally indicated his preference, Sher noted.

Eckert is the third suspected Auschwitz guard against whom Sher’s office has brought legal action this year. A deportation action was filed in July against Albert Ensin of Stoughton, Mass. Stefan Reger of Yardville, N.J., was served with a denaturalization complaint earlier this month.

According to Justice Department records, Eckert entered the United States in February, 1956, after applying for an immigrant visa and registering as an alien at the American consulate in Salzburg, Austria.

It is not known when he arrived in California, but property records show that in June, 1965, he and his wife, Theresia, bought their home on a corner lot in La Puente in the San Gabriel Valley.

Betty LaValley, who lives across the street, said that Eckert cast himself as a victim of the war, rather than a willing participant.

“He said that he was in the concentration camp and that they were told that anybody who didn’t want to (serve with the Germans) could go home, but when two men did, they shot them in the back, so what choice did the others have?” LaValley said.

She described Eckert as an “excellent neighbor” who has shared flowers, fruit and vegetables grown in his garden and once crafted a rocking chair from an apple tree that he chopped down in his backyard. The Eckerts, she said, have at least three grown children and grandchildren.

Friendly Neighbors

“They were always very friendly, but his wife barely speaks English, so it was always hard for them to socialize,” LaValley said.

She and other neighbors said Eckert was a factory worker, but no one could recall the nature of his former job or his employer.

Eckert’s standing among his neighbors is similar to that once enjoyed by Andrija Artukovic, a former Orange County resident sentenced to death for war crimes committed while he was interior minister of the Nazi puppet state of Croatia.

Artukovic, 87, was extradited last year to Yugoslavia, after the Justice Department linked him to the World War II massacres of 700,000 at a concentration camp in Croatia, which is now a Yugoslav republic.