The Justice Department, in a complaint filed in Federal District Court in Los Angeles, acted last Thursday to strip the American citizenship of Dalivaldis Karklins, 66, for concealing his wartime membership in the Nadona police force in Nadona, Latvia and his position as a concentration camp commandment during the Nazi occupation.
The complaint also declared that Karklins, now a resident of Monterey Park, Calif. had “materially assisted in the persecution and murder of unarmed Jewish civilians in Latvia” during World War II.
Andrea Ordin, U.S. District Attorney in Los Angeles, and Allan Ryan, director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigation here, said that during Karklin’s tenure as head of the Nadona camp, “unarmed inmates of the camp were starved, beaten, tortured and murdered.”
The Justice Department charged that Karklins concealed his wartime past when he applied for American citizenship, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1963. Stripping Karklins of his citizenship would be the first step in a long legal process to deport him.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
