Former concentration camp guard deported to Germany

SAN FRANCISCO – An 83-year-old woman who admitted she had served as a guard at a concentration camp during World War II was deported to Germany, federal officials said Tuesday.

Prosecutors would not say how they learned about Elfriede Rinkel, but a department spokeswoman said investigators routinely compare guard rosters and other Nazi documents to U.S. immigration records.

Rinkel admitted in court documents that she worked as a prison guard at the Ravensbrueck camp near Furstenberg from June 1944 until the camp was abandoned by the Nazi government in April 1945. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, she worked with an SS-trained attack dog but was not a member of the Nazi party.

As part of her June agreement with prosecutors, Rinkel gave up her green card, moved to Germany and agreed never to return to the United States, according to the court documents. The government agreed not to release information about Rinkel’s case, which began in April, until after her departure. She left this month.

Rinkel’s husband, a German Jew whom she married after coming to the United States, died in 2004. Her brother and sister-in-law, when reached at their Northern California home, said they were unaware of Rinkel’s past and believed her husband had been, too.

More than 130,000 women passed through Ravensbrueck’s gates between 1939 and 1945; an estimated 40,000 survived, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The camp had more than 150 female guards.