Elfriede Rinkel
Elfriede Lina Rinkel (née Huth, born July 14, 1922, Leipzig, Germany) was a guard at the Ravensbrück concentration camp from June 1944 until April 1945 handling an SS-trained guard dog. She claims that she did not use her dog as a weapon against prisoners, and that she did not join the Nazi party. However, other information contradicts this: "One prisoner reported that women were even worse than men in commanding their dogs to brutally attack inmates."[1]
She left Germany for the United States and was admitted as an immigrant on or around September 21, 1959 in San Francisco, California. At a German-American club in San Francisco she met Fred William Rinkel and they married about 1962. He died in 2004. Rinkel stated she never told her husband of her past.[2]
On September 1, 2006, Elfriede Rinkel was deported to Germany under a settlement agreement signed in June 2006 after being charged by a federal law requiring removal of aliens who took part in acts of Nazi-sponsored persecution filed by the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and the United States Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).[2]
References
- ↑ Women Camp Guards
- 1 2 Blumenthal, Ralph (April 4, 2010). "The Last Nazi Hunter". Parade via The Virginian Pilot. pp. 4–5.
External links
- "US widow deported over Nazi past". BBC News. 21 September 2006.
- Serrano, Richard A. ""Sweet lady" surprise: Nazi prison-guard past". Los Angeles Times (The Seattle Times).
- Photograph