Josias Kumpf, the former Nazi concentration camp guard who was deported from the United States on Thursday, will be able to stay in Austria without being extradited and he cannot be prosecuted in Austria for the acts that led to his deportation, the Austrian justice ministry said on Friday. 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 in 1965. She said that Kumpf was deported to Austria because it was the country from which he came when he entered the United States in 1956. The US justice department said on Thursday that Kumpf had admitted to participating in a 1943 massacre of 8,000 Jews - including some 400 children - in the Trawniki labour camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. 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. Justice Department officials pushed for Kumpf's deportation, saying Kumpf “presided over and witnessed the torture and murder of helpless people.” Kumpf's presence assisted Nazis in perpetrating the massacre by discouraging escapees and controlling the victims, they said."His culpability in this atrocity does not diminish with the passage of time,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich. Kumpf and his attorneys argued that the 83-year-old had never played an active role in the atrocities. “He never laid a finger on anyone, he never shot at anyone,” said attorney Peter Rogers. Kumpf was born in the part of Yugoslavia that is now Serbia, as a member of the ethnic German minority there. Kumpf said he was taken from his home in Yugoslavia as a 17-year-old and forced to serve as a guard. After joining the SS as a guard in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, he moved on to Trawniki. He also allegedly served at slave labor sites in France. Swoboda cited other reasons that Kumpf would not be prosecuted in Austria. The main reason was that he 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. The opposition Greens have called on the government to amend the law to allow for the prosecution of alleged Nazi war criminals regardless of the time elapsed. 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.
