Expelled Nazis got millions in US benefits

Dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals and SS guards collected millions of dollars in US Social Security benefits after being forced out of the United States, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The payments, underwritten by American taxpayers, flowed through a legal loophole that gave the US Justice Department leverage to persuade Nazi suspects to leave the US. If they agreed to go or simply fled before deportation, they could keep their Social Security, according to interviews and internal US government records.

Among those receiving benefits were armed SS troops who guarded the network of Nazi camps where millions of Jews perished, a rocket scientist who used slave labourers to advance his research in the Third Reich, and a Nazi collaborator who engineered the arrest and execution of thousands of Jews in Poland.

There are at least four living beneficiaries. They include Martin Hartmann, a former SS guard at the Sachsenhausen camp in Germany, and Jakob Denzinger, who patrolled the grounds at the Auschwitz camp complex in Poland.

"It's absolutely outrageous that Nazi war criminals are continuing to receive Social Security benefits when they have been outlawed from our country for many, many, many years," said US Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, a senior Democratic member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. She said she plans to introduce legislation to close the loophole.