Nazi criminals received after the war tens of millions from US

The United States paid more than 20 million dollars (18.3 million euros) after World War II for benefits and other social benefits to German war criminals. According to a survey that has been carried out after the Associated Press had reported on the payments, writes the New York Times.

The money went to more than 130 Germans who committed war crimes during the war, guards were in the SS or others atrocities committed. AP reported that the government used a loophole to get about Nazis to leave the country. When they left voluntarily they were allowed to retain their benefits. The Justice Department denies that it benefits as an incentive used to get rid from the Nazis.
The payments were suspended early this year, when a new law entered: No Social Security for the Nazis Act. It involved four Nazis who received benefits. The amounts paid are higher than was first thought.

Barely research

After World War II, thousands of Nazis fled to the US. Because there has been done hardly any research into their past, they could just use the social systems. Only in the eighties the first ex-Nazis were deported.
AP spent last year the story of the former Auschwitz guard Jacob Denzinger who had built up a new life after the war in Ohio. In 1989 the US began a procedure to strip him of his American citizenship. He moved to Germany and then got each year a payment of $ 1,500.
Original Photo: August Sander, Soldier, 1940 (Photo above is colorized)