SEATTLE (AP) — An 88-year-old man who admitted being involved with a Nazi death squad during World War II has died, just weeks before a trial to determine whether he could keep his U.S. citizenship.
Seattle and King County Public Health spokesman James Apa confirms that Peter Egner died last Wednesday of natural causes.
Egner claimed during a naturalization interview in 1965 that he had served in the German air force during World War II.
But he admitted in a deposition last year that he served in the Security Police in Belgrade, where he guarded transports of prisoners to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. He told prosecutors he joined the Security Police because he wanted to avoid combat.
The Justice Department was seeking to strip his citizenship, and Serbia asked the U.S. late last year to turn him over for trial on war crimes charges.
