The U.S. Justice Department has moved to revoke the citizenship of a Pennsylvania man who is charged with having been an SS guard at three concentration camps during World War II.
Denaturalization proceedings were begun against Nikolaus Schiffer of New Ringgold, Pa., who is said to have served at the Sachsenhausen, Flossenburg and Majdanek camps.
A complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia by the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations alleges that Schiffer, 72, willfully concealed his service at the camps and membership in the SS Death’s Head Battalion when applying for U.S. citizenship in 1956.
“Abundant evidence exists concerning the atrocities against civilians at these concentration camps during the period of Schiffer’s SS service,” Neal Sher, OSI director, said in a statement.
The complaint charges that Schiffer was an armed SS guard from 1943 until the end of the war in 1945.
According to the complaint, from about August 1943 until December of that year, Schiffer was a guard at Sachsenhausen, in Germany. It says that during January 1944, he served in the Nazi Waffen SS at the SS training camp in Trawniki, Poland, and that from February 1944 through about July 1944, he served at Majdanek, also in Poland.
It also claims Schiffer was an armed guard of prisoners at the Hersbruch subcamp of Flossenburg, in Germany, from about August 1944 through about April 1945.
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.
