California woman admits to be Concentration Camp guard, is deported

[Jim O]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An 83-year-old woman who admitted she had served as a guard at a concentration camp during World War II was deported to Germany, federal officials said Tuesday.

Prosecutors would not say how they learned about Elfriede Rinkel, but a department spokeswoman said investigators routinely compare guard rosters and other Nazi documents to U.S. immigration records.

Rinkel admitted in court documents that she worked as a prison guard at the Ravensbrueck camp near Furstenberg from June 1944 until the camp was abandoned by the Nazi government in April 1945. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, she worked with an SS-trained attack dog but was not a member of the Nazi party.

"Concentration camp guards such as Elfriede Rinkel played a vital role in the Nazi regime's horrific mistreatment of innocent victims," said Alice Fisher, a Justice Department lawyer. "This case reflects the government's unwavering commitment to remove Nazi persecutors from this country."

As part of her June agreement with prosecutors, Rinkel gave up her green card, moved to Germany and agreed never to return to the U.S., according to the court documents. The government agreed to not release information about Rinkel's case, which began in April, until after her departure. She left this month.

A call to her lawyer Tuesday wasn't immediately returned.

Rinkel's husband, a German Jew whom she married after coming to the U.S., died in 2004. Her brother and sister-in-law, when reached at their Northern California home, said they were unaware of Rinkel's past and believed her husband had been, too. The couple asked not to be identified by name because they feared a backlash from friends and family.

More than 130,000 women passed through Ravensbrueck's gates between 1939 and 1945; an estimated 40,000 survived, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In January 1945, it had more than 45,000 prisoners, mostly women. The camp had more than 150 female guards and was a major training site for female concentration camp staff.

Rinkel was a furrier by trade in her hometown of Leipzig, according to her younger brother, who fought for the German army in North Africa and was captured by U.S. troops. In 1950, the general who ran the prison camp in Wyoming where he was held helped Rinkel's brother permanently settle in the U.S.

Nine years later, the brother and sister-in-law sponsored Rinkel to come to the Bay Area where she met her husband, Fred Rinkel, at a German-American friendship club, according to the couple.

Fred Rinkel received a Jewish burial in San Francisco and his wife was to be interred next to him, but she has since changed those plans.

Source: Syracuse.com: Latest News and More

Imagine keeping that little tidbit from your German-Jewish husband? Just a little ironic.

[Klaus]

I wonder what will happen to her in Germany. Nothing so far. To marry a jew after you've been a guard in a concentration camp... You need some balls to do so.

[Jim O]

Interesting also is the fact that she lived in the US for almost half a century, married here, made her life here, and never took citizenship (a "green card" is a permit to be a permanent resident alien and to work). I wonder if she knew that applying for citizenship would have been risky for her.

[Klaus]

Don't you get a green card if you marry an American citizen? I'm pretty sure she knew the risks.

[Jim O]

Originally Posted by Klaus

Don't you get a green card if you marry an American citizen? I'm pretty sure she knew the risks.

That's one path. Family sponsorship is another. According to the article, her brother got his in 1950 and sponsored her some years later, probably after becoming a citizen.

[Klaus]

"Family sponsorship"? Never heard of it...but I'm not American

[Jim O]

Originally Posted by Klaus

"Family sponsorship"? Never heard of it...but I'm not American

Yes, my former business partner is from India. He married an American citizen and received his green card. A few years later he became a citizen and then "sponsored" his parents who received green cards. Of course they never really became "permanent" US residents but travel here frequently.

[Klaus]

Ah, ok. Got it. So it's some kind of lower green card. So they can stay longer than, let's say, a tourist.

But back on topic. You think she will be charged of any crime in Germany?

[Jim O]

Originally Posted by Klaus

I wonder what will happen to her in Germany. Nothing so far. To marry a jew after you've been a guard in a concentration camp... You need some balls to do so.

From SPIEGEL ONLINE:

...German authorities said she would probably not go to jail. "We will not be pursuing her case," Kurt Schrimm, chief of the German bureau that investigates former Nazis, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "For us there is one crime that is important, and that is murder. There is no evidence that she committed murder."

Still, Rinkel never mentioned her job to her husband Fred, a German Jew she married in 1962, although he'd lost his parents in the Holocaust. "You don't talk about things like that, never," she told the San Francisco Chronicle. "That is the past."...


..."She was trying to atone for actions," Rinkel's lawyer in San Francisco, Alison Dixon, told The Los Angeles Times. "She married a Jewish man and she gave to Jewish charities."

She's described as a modest, sweet, private woman who was hoping to live down her past.

She buried her husband in a Jewish cemetery south of San Francisco in a double grave, with a Star of David above both their names. Her plans to be buried with him have been abandoned, and she just hopes to resume a quiet life with her sister.

There's still a slim chance of legal trouble in Germany, though. Kurt Schrimm said the Central Office has passed on her file to German public prosecutors who could open a legal case, but observers think Rinkel was too low in the Nazi hierarchy for aggressive prosecution.

"Clearly it's a complex story," said Mark Weitzman, Director of the Task Force Against Hate at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in New York. "Essentially it's our position that anyone involved in Nazi atrocities should be brought to justice. Could there be extenuating circumstances that may mitigate punishment? I think that can be considered," he said. "But it doesn't change what she did."

[Klaus]

Oh, well... That settles that question...