In the second such proceeding this month, the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations has initiated deportation proceedings against a Florida man for allegedly serving as an SS guard at a concentration camp during World War II.
OSI announced last Friday that it had opened proceedings against Mathias Denuel, a 73-year-old retired tailor from Naples, Fla. It alleges he served the Nazis as an armed SS guard at Gusen, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
Earlier this month, OSI announced it was initiating deportation proceedings against Alexander Schweidler of Inverness, Fla., another alleged Mauthausen SS guard.
Neither man is an American citizen.
In the newer case, Denuel, who is a citizen of Germany, was served with an order asking him to show why he should not be deported for assisting in persecuting civilians on the basis of race, religion, national origin or political opinion.
In a statement, OSI Director Neal Sher said Denuel had admitted his SS service at Gusen when questioned by an OSI attorney. During that interview, Denuel also admitted guarding a transport of prisoners from a concentration camp in southern Poland to Mauthausen.
Substantial evidence exists of atrocities committed against thousands of civilians at Gusen, which was the largest Mauthausen subcamp, during the period in which Denuel served there.
Denuel, who is an ethnic German native of Romania, was allegedly a member of the Waffen SS from about July 28, 1943 to at least May 8, 1945, under the direction of or in association with the Nazi government of Germany.
The federal complaint states that he served as a member of a Death’s Head Battalion guarding prisoners at Gusen concentration camp from August 1943 to April 1945.
The Death’s Head Battalions were organizations within the Waffen SS charged with guarding the concentration camps.
The complaint further states that among the prisoners incarcerated at Gusen during his service were “Gypsies, vagrants, homosexuals, Jews, members of religious societies, political opponents of the Nazis, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish forced laborers, Polish intelligentsia and Polish political leaders.
“During your service at Gusen, thousands of prisoners were subjected to confinement, forced labor, corporal punishment, inhumane conditions and torture,” the complaint states.
OSI alleges that when Denuel applied for a U.S. visa on Nov. 6, 1955, he “willfully misrepresented” his place of residence from 1942 to 1947.
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