The Justice Department has asked a Chicago immigration judge to deport Michael Schmidt, an Illinois resident accused of having been a Nazi concentration camp guard.
Schmidt was stripped of his U.S. citizenship in January 1990 by the U.S. District Court in Chicago, a decision upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. The decision was based on evidence that Schmidt had lied about his wartime activities to secure U.S. citizenship.
He denied charges by the Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations, that he served as an armed guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. OSI has also accused him of serving as a member of the SS Death’s Head Battalion.
Neal Sher, director of OSI, said Sachsenhausen was the site of “grotesque” medical experiments on Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, U.S. prisoners of war and political prisoners.
She said Tuesday that a date for the court hearing has yet to be set, but that he expects the whole process to be “fairly quick.”
Schmidt is one of 15 alleged Nazi war criminals against whom OSI is currently engaged in deportation proceedings, Sher said.
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.
