Josias Kumpf, now 83, did active service during the Holocaust as an armed SS guard at three Nazi concentration camps: the Sachsenhausen Camp, slave labor sites in Nazi-occupied France where prisoners built launching platforms for Germany’s V-1 and V-2 rockets that were used in attacks on Britain, and Nazi forced-labor camps for Jews in Trawniki, Poland. He was born in Serbia but was taken by the Nazis from his home in Yugoslavia when he was 17 and forced to serve as a guard starting in October 1942.

Kumpf was part of the November 1943 Operation Harvest Festival, a mass execution where 42,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered at three camps in eastern Poland in a span of two days. He was also a guard when about 8,000 Jewish prisoners, including 400 children, were shot and killed in pits at Trawniki. In fact, Kumpf is known as the ‘murder pits’ guard. According to him, his task was to “shoot and kill those who were still half-alive to prevent their escape.”

In 1956, Kumpf migrated from Austria to the US. He became a US citizen in 1964 and eventually settled in Racine, Wisconsin. In May 2005, his US citizenship was nullified because he violated a law that says those with records of persecution cannot enter the US. This meant that he falsified his identity and documents to obtain US citizenship. The US government has deported him to Austria.

The Holocaust is one of the most tragic times in human history. It has redefined the meaning of guilt, giving it more than a singular meaning. Of late, controversy surrounds the Catholic Church and the Vatican regarding the issue of Holocaust denial.

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Via BBC