A HAMPSHIRE pensioner exposed as a guard at a Nazi slave-labour camp has insisted: "I've done nothing wrong."

Alexander Huryn said he was not responsible for any of the deaths at the Trawniki camp in occupied Poland, where thousands of Jewish prisoners died before the site was liberated by the Russians in 1944.

Mr Huryn, 90, of Dalewood Road, Fareham, has been questioned by Scotland Yard's War Crimes Unit but only as a witness, not a suspect.

In an interview with the Daily Echo, the former Ukrainian farmer denied any involvement in the atrocities and said he even sheltered a Jewish woman from the Nazis before being forced to join the German army.

Once at Trawniki he was issued with an old rifle, five bullets and a uniform that comprised little more than a cloth cap.

"Although I was supposed to be one of the guards I was kept apart from the prisoners. My main job was training horses for the German officers," said Mr Huryn.

Many of the Trawniki inmates died from starvation and disease while others were either shot or hanged.

Mr Huryn, a retired carpenter, added: "I had absolutely nothing to do with that. I never shot anyone.

"I don't like what the Nazis did. I feel bad about what happened at Trawniki. It was terrible - but I had nothing to do with it."

Mr Huryn grew up in the village of Wola Uhruska, now in eastern Poland.

When the Nazis occupied the region local men were recruited as auxiliaries. Mr Huryn said he joined the German army amid fears that his family would be rounded up and shot if he refused.

He emigrated to the UK in 1948 and was granted British citizenship in 1965. He lives with his English-born wife Diana, also 90.