| Josias Kumpf | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 7, 1925 Nova Pazova, Yugoslavia (now Serbia) |
| Died | October 15, 2009 (aged 84) Vienna, Austria |
| Known for | former Nazi concentration camp guard accused of taking part in genocide |
Josias Kumpf (April 7, 1925 – October 15, 2009) was a Nazi concentration camp guard.
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Josias Kumpf, born in the former Yugoslavia, served under the SS guard forces at Sachsenhausen in 1942 at the age of 17 and served there for about a year before transferring to Trawniki concentration camp. Kumpf was accused of having taken part in the Holocaust; including a murderous November 1943 Nazi operation that went by the code name “Aktion Erntefest” (Harvest festival) in which, over two days, 42,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered at three Nazi camps in eastern Poland.[1] He was active in the murder of 8,000 Jews on November 3, 1943 in Trawniki concentration camp, where it was his task to stand guard over a pit where prisoners were being gunned down and "finish off" the wounded, although he claimed to have never discharged his weapon.[2]
After World War II, he emigrated to the United States in 1956 and settled in Illinois, becoming a naturalized United States citizen in 1964. He worked as a sausage maker in the United States before retiring. He moved to Wisconsin after his wife died in 2000. In 2003, the United States sued to strip him of his U.S. nationality.[3] He was deported to Austria in March 2009.[1] However, Austria was unable to prosecute him because the statute of limitations had expired.[4] On September 17, 2009, Spain charged Kumpf and asked for his extradition.[5] Before the extradition request could be processed, however, Kumpf died that October 15 in Wilhelminenspital in Vienna.[6]