DOJ Seeks to Oust Alleged Ex-Nazi From United States
Department of Justice officials have asked a federal court in Washington state to revoke the citizenship status of a man who the DOJ now believes was a Nazi police officer in German-occupied Belgrade, Serbia, during World War II.
The government claims Peter Enger, 86 of Bellevue, Wash., was a member of a unit responsible for the mass murder of 17,000 Serbian civilians, the Seattle Post Intelligencer’s Seattle 911 blog reports.
Born in Yogoslavia, Engler is accused of serving in the Nazi unit between April 1941 and September 1943. For his first nine months of service, the DOJ alleges Engler was part of a unit that operated as an Einsatzgruppe, a Nazi mobile killing unit, according to a DOJ news release.
Among the allegations:
• Egner’s unit participated in executing 11,164 individuals, most of them Serbian Jewish men.
• In early 1942, his unit carried out the murder of 6,280 Serbian Jewish women and children by way of asphyxiation in a specially equipped van.
Engler, who was reportedly reached by the AP and denied knowing anything about the DOJ complaint, has acknowledged he served as an interpreter and volunteered for his service and concealed that information when making his initial citizenship application, the DOJ maintains.
The release notes that since 1979 the DOJ’s Office of Special Investigations it has won cases against 107 participants in Nazi persecution.
