Bellevue man served with WWII Nazi death squad, U.S. says

Peter Egner talked freely to his friends about his service as a conscript in the German army during World War II, and even showed them the jagged scar on his hip — the wound that Egner said ended his military service.

"He was a [WWII] veteran, like I was a veteran," said Russell Wilson, 81, his longtime neighbor in West Linn, Ore.

But federal Nazi hunters say the 86-year-old Egner, of Bellevue, has lived a lie all these years, and Tuesday moved to revoke his U.S. citizenship, claiming he was a member of a Nazi death squad responsible for the murders of more than 17,000 Serbian Jews and others as the German Wehrmacht marched east on the Soviet Union.

A complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle alleges that Egner was not a conscript, but instead served as a guard and interpreter with the notorious Nazi-run Security Police and Security Service (SPSS) in Belgrade, Serbia (then Yugoslavia) from 1941 through the fall of 1943, when he was wounded. During that time, the complaint stated, his unit participated in the roundup and systematic killings of tens of thousands of Serbian Jews, Gypsies and political dissidents.

Reached Tuesday by The Associated Press by telephone at the Silver Glen retirement cooperative in Bellevue, Egner confirmed his identity but said he was unaware of the complaint. Asked about his alleged service with the Nazis, he said: "I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm sorry. Bye."

Robert Gibbs, a Seattle immigration attorney representing Egner, acknowledged that his client served in the SPSS but said he has denied being involved in atrocities.

Gibbs said the complaint is "carefully worded and very generic. It doesn't say Mr. Egner did anything, and it provides only the most tenuous connection with anyone who did.

"We don't know what they have," Gibbs said. "But it seems to me if they're coming after this old man, then they must be at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to war criminals."

The Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations, which is responsible for finding war criminals on U.S. soil, identified Egner's participation through Nazi documents, the complaint says.

"The Nazi unit in which Peter Egner is alleged to have participated was responsible for countless deaths and unimaginable suffering," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich in a news release issued from Washington, D.C.

Court documents allege that during the first nine months that Egner was a member of the SPSS, the unit operated as the Belgrade Einsatzgruppe, a special mobile unit charged with early efforts to systematically murder Jews as part of Hitler's Final Solution.

"The organization played a leading role in the Nazis' mass murder of 6,280 Jewish women and children" at the Semlin concentration camp near Belgrade, according to an affidavit filed by Elizabeth White, the Office of Special Investigation's (OSI) chief historian and deputy director.

All were asphyxiated or suffocated by carbon monoxide in the back of a special mobile gas van while being driven to burial pits, according to the court documents. The process went on daily for almost two months, according to the documents.

During the fall of 1941, the complaint says, Egner's unit killed 11,164 Serbian civilians, most of them Jewish men, but the dead also included suspected Communists and Gypsies.

The complaint says Egner conceded during a February 2007 interview that he was a member of the SPSS and that he guarded prisoners being trucked from the Semlin concentration camp to Avala, also near Belgrade.

Egner, a native of Yugoslavia, also told investigators that he acted as an interpreter during interrogations of political prisoners. According to White's affidavit, "Interrogations conducted by SPSS personnel sometimes involved severe torture, often followed by execution."

OSI spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said the U.S. "has no way to prosecute Mr. Egner criminally. We can, however, see to it that he does not benefit from being a U.S. citizen."

Egner immigrated to the U.S. in 1960 and was granted U.S. citizenship in 1966. The complaint alleges that Egner lied on his citizenship petition and omitted his SPSS service, saying instead that he served as an infantry sergeant in the German army.

A man who answered the phone at Egner's nephew's home in Bellevue said "no comment" and hung up.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said he learned of the complaint against Egner on Tuesday from the Department of Justice.

"We will watch to see if he is stripped of his citizenship," the rabbi said. "If he is sent from this country, then we and others will call for a criminal prosecution wherever he lands."

Wilson, Egner's longtime neighbor in Oregon, described him as outgoing, friendly and an avid golfer who worked for years at a downtown Portland hotel. He moved to Bellevue about two years ago to be closer to family after his wife of 30 years died after a stroke.

"He told me that he'd lost his lady and just couldn't be here anymore," Wilson said.

Wilson said he and Egner rarely talked of the war, but recalled Egner had claimed to be in the German infantry and said he was shot by a Serbian resistance fighter.

Egner's longtime golfing partner, Del Mahler of Beaverton, Ore., said Egner told him he became a communications officer in Denmark after he was wounded.

Mahler said the Egner had told him that "some government agency or another was coming after him" but that he didn't give details.

Another West Linn neighbor, Marcia McClocklin, 69, said Egner and his wife, Gerda, had adopted Gerda's nephew after her sister died in Germany, and that he moved to Bellevue to be closer to him.

Several neighbors at the Bellevue retirement community where Egner has lived since leaving West Linn described him as polite and friendly. Mary Mahler wondered at the government's decision "to go after an 86-year-old man for something he did when he was 19 or 20 years old. I mean, don't they have anything better to do?"

Rabbi Hier, however, said Egner's advanced age is the reason "that he should be brought to justice now.

"That he lived so long is no reason to reward him because he lied and was never found out," the rabbi said. "Look at how many young people who were cut down in the prime of their lives."

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com.

Seattle Times staff reporter Christine Clarridge, news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.