By Morris Malakoff, JTNews Correspondent
Nearly 63 years after the end of World War II, the U.S. government believes it has found a former member of the Nazi SS living out his days in the Seattle area.
Peter Egner, 86, who moved to the Silver Glen Retirement Cooperative in Bellevue two years ago from Oregon, where he had worked in the hospitality industry, has been accused of having been a member of the the Nazi SS Security Police and Security Service in Belgrade, Serbia. During the opening years of the war, that unit was known as the Belgrade Einsatzgruppe and was charged specifically with the extermination of Jews, Roma and others labeled as undesirable by the Third Reich.
While the complaint against Egner by the Justice Department does accuse him of being a member of the Belgrade Einsatzgruppe, it does not seek to directly punish him for that activity. In fact, the complaint addresses an alleged crime that occurred in the 1960s.
In March of 1960, Egner entered the United States and established residency. Five years later, he applied for and received U.S. citizenship. On his citizenship application he stated he had been a member of the German army as an infantry sergeant during the war.
But according to an affidavit in support of the complaint, Egner admitted in a 2007 interview with federal investigators that he had in fact been a member of the Belgrade Einsatzgruppe. He played down his role, saying he served only as a guard and interpreter.
Not admitting that role at the time of his citizenship application is the crime for which the U.S. government seeks to prosecute Egner with the aim of eventually stripping him of his citizenship and deporting him to Serbia.
While the process of taking away Egner’s citizenship and eventually deporting him could take years, his prosecution for war crimes may be expedited by a planned request by the Serbian government to extradite him based on information it has on his activities.
Serbian prosecutors, anticipating his return, have reportedly begun to build a case against Egner for his alleged part in the killing of more than 17,000 civilians by the Belgrade Einsatzgruppe between 1941 and 1943. Over 6,000 of those killed came from concentration camps. Many were murdered by being driven in trucks with the engine exhaust piped into the compartments holding the victims. Documentation also exists of many dying during interrogations such as those in which Egner says he served as an interpreter for the SS.
The director of the Belgrade Archive, Branka Prpa, told the Belgrade-based news division of the radio and television operation B92 that her institution has in its possession two documents regarding Egner.
“The Belgrade Archive has found documents on Peter Egner in the card of Belgrade residents, where he registered in 1940, which shows that the German plan to occupy Belgrade was underway. We also found [reference to] him in certain files on people who went through Gestapo investigation procedures,” she said.
Prpa added that the content of these documents will be revealed to the public at a later date, after the Serbian war crimes prosecution has examined them.
The United States claims in its charging documents that the Belgrade Einsatzgruppe and its predecessor units were responsible for the deaths of nearly 17,000 people.
Egner is not the first Western Washington resident to be accused by the government of participation in the atrocities of Nazi Germany.
Two decades ago, the Justice Department started similar proceedings against Lithuanian expatriate Valdis Didrichsons of Mercer Island. While he was eventually stripped of his citizenship, by the time the process played out over two years, with Didrichsons eventually admitting he lied on his citizenship application and forfeiting his citizenship, his health was deemed to frail to deport him. He died in 1995 at age 81 in Seattle. As with the prior case, Egner’s advanced age might prevent him from leaving the United States and answering charges in Serbia.
According to Justice Department spokesperson Laura Sweeny, Egner has 60 days from the time the July 15 complaint was filed to respond to the charges. From that point, the case will go into a form of civil litigation before possibly heading to a trial.
While Egner’s attorney, Robert Gibbs, did not return telephone calls from JTNews, he and the U.S. Attorney could not come to an agreement to bring the case before a federal magistrate, a move that would have advanced the timeline for the case. It will now go before a federal judge in Seattle, entering a litigation process that can be complex and time consuming. Egner would likely not make a public appearance before an actual trial begins.
Egner has spoken to the U.S. media once since the charges were made public on July 15. During a call from a reporter with the Associated Press, Egner acknowledged his identity but said that he had no idea what the reporter was referring to in terms of the charges surrounding his citizenship application. But in an interview with Serbian media he addressed the accusations of his participation in atrocities in the Serbian capital, saying, “I’ve never hurt anyone in my Belgrade. You have my word.”