Ex-Nazi guard freed on technicality in Austrian court

A former Nazi concentration camp guard who was deported from the United States on Thursday is now a free man because he cannot be prosecuted in Austria, the Austrian justice ministry said on Friday. Josias Kumpf, who by his own admission, aided in the killing of 8,000 Jews the Trawniki labor camp in Nazi occupied Poland in 1943 , arrived in Austria on Thursday after the United States deported him following the revocation of his citizenship. Austrian justice ministry spokeswoman Katharina Swoboda said Vienna had warned U.S. authorities in the past that Austria would be unable to prosecute Kumpf because the statute of limitations relating to his crimes had expired. "We have always pointed out to the United States that he cannot be charged here with the crimes of which he is accused," Swoboda said. The main reason was that Kumpf was younger than 20 at the time of the crimes. The fact Kumpf had never been an Austrian citizen, and that the crimes which he is accused of were not committed in Austria, also made prosecution in Austria impossible, she said. Kumpf was born in the part of Yugoslavia that is now Serbia, as a member of the ethnic German minority there. After joining the SS as a guard in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, he moved on to Trawniki in German-occupied Poland. The U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday that Kumpf helped guard around 8,000 Jewish prisoners -- including some 400 children -- who were shot and killed in pits at Trawniki in a special operation in November 1943. The department cited Kumpf as saying his assignment was to watch for victims who were still "halfway alive" or "convulsing" and "shoot them to kill" if they attempted to escape. Kumpf was deported to Austria because it was the country from which he came when he entered the United States in 1956, she said. Swoboda said with his U.S. citizenship revoked, Kumpf was now stateless and had no residence permit in Austria, which technically made him an illegal alien. But since he could not be extradited to another country, he would be able to stay on. He would have to register his address.