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By Glynn Cosker
Editor, In Homeland Security

According to a new report by The Associated Press, Nazi war criminals forced to emigrate from the U.S. decades ago continue to collect monthly Social Security payments—totaling “in the millions.”

The news comes after the AP spent two years investigating the loophole that has benefited at least 38 Nazi Party members since 1970, at U.S. taxpayer’s expense. Some of the brutal and callous S.S. guards were among the individuals who cashed in from the loophole.

The AP report states that by March 1999, 28 Nazi criminals had taken home $1.5 million in Social Security checks since their emigration from the U.S.

There are four Nazis still alive in Europe and enjoying approximately $15,000 per year in U.S. Social Security benefits, according to the AP’s report. One of them is 90-year-old Jakob Denzinger. The former Nazi guard at Auschwitz is living quite comfortably in a riverside apartment in Osijek, Croatia—while enjoying a Social Security payment of around $1,500 per month. The average monthly income in Croatia is about half that amount.

According to the AP, the U.S. government renounced Denzinger’s U.S. citizenship in 1989 when Nazi hunters finally caught up with the Ohio businessman but allowed him to collect on his Social Security as long as he voluntarily left the country. He did, as did dozens of other Nazi war criminals.

“I don’t want to say anything,” Denzinger said when AP reporters inquired about his side of the story. Denzinger’s son—who still lives in the U.S.—told the AP that his father “deserved” the payments.

Former Nazi and one-time resident of Montana, 95-year-old Martin Hartmann, is another man currently paid each month by the U.S. government. The former SS guard at the Sachsenhausen camp in Germany is currently living in Berlin.

The Nazis were ineligible for trials in U.S. courts because their crimes took place overseas, so many were tracked down and subsequently persuaded to leave the U.S. on their own accord. The practice became known as “Nazi dumping” since the men arrived in Europe and were immediately stateless—leaving their new host country to deal with them.

The AP report’s that others who benefited from Social Security payments include:

An armed SS troops who guarded the Nazi network of camps where millions of Jews perished.

An SS guard who took part in the brutal liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland that killed as many as 13,000 Jews.

A Nazi collaborator who engineered the arrest and execution of thousands of Jews in Poland.

A German rocket scientist accused of using slave labor to build the V-2 rocket that pummeled London. He later won NASA’s highest honor for helping to put a man on the moon.

The reaction on Capitol Hill to the AP report called for speedy remedial action.

“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 U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, adding that she will soon introduce legislation to eliminate the loophole.

The full Associated Press investigative report can be found here.