WASHINGTON—Former Nazis should not be getting the Social Security benefits they are receiving as they age overseas, the White House said on Monday, responding to an Associated Press (AP) investigation that revealed millions of dollars have been paid to war-crimes suspects and former Schutzstaffel, or SS guards, who left the US for Europe.
“Our position is we don’t believe these individuals should be getting these benefits,” said Spokesman Eric Shultz when asked about the situation.
He said the Justice Department has said it has “aggressively pursued Nazi war criminals and brought over 100 of them to justice.” He added that the department and the Social Security Administration (SSA) “work together within the confines of current law to cut off benefits for criminals that shouldn’t be receiving them.”
AP reported on Sunday that dozens of Nazi suspects have collected benefits after being forced out of the US. Though their World War II actions led to their departure, they were not convicted of war crimes.
The payments flowed through a legal loophole that gave the 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.
Several efforts to change the law to cut off payments to the few aged former Nazis have failed.
Separately, a senior House Democrat demanded on Monday that the Obama administration investigate the payments over the years.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York requested the inquiry in letters to the inspectors general at the Justice Department and Social Security. Maloney, a high-ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called the payments a “gross misuse of taxpayer dollars.”
The Justice Department said it was reviewing Maloney’s letter. The SSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The SSA has refused AP’s request that it provide the total number of Nazi suspects who received benefits and the dollar amounts. Spokesman William “BJ” Jarrett said the agency does not track data specific to Nazi cases.
AP last week appealed the agency’s denial of the information through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The appeal also cited several concerns about the SSA’s handling of the FOIA request, including the agency’s alteration of the request “in a manner serving both to undercut AP’s inquiry while simultaneously sparing the SSA from having to disclose potentially embarrassing information,” the October 16 appeal said.
Among those receiving Social Security benefits were SS troops who guarded the network of Nazi camps, where millions of Jews perished, a rocket scientist accused of using slave laborers 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.
Image credits: AP