A federal judge has issued an order revoking the U.S. citizenship of Sergis Hutyrczyk of Somerset, N.J., who admitted he was an SS guard at a concentration camp in Byelorussia during World War II.
Judge Harold Ackerman of the U.S. District Court in Newark entered the denaturalization order Oct. 2.
The U.S. Justice Department charged that Hutyrczyk, 68, a retired factory worker, lied about his past when he immigrated to the United States in January 1954 under the Displaced Persons Act and when he applied for citizenship in March 1961.
The Justice Department began the denaturalization proceedings against Hutyrczyk in August 1990. It charged that his crimes included the killings of several inmates of the Koldyczewo concentration camp, where he was an armed guard, and supervision of other killings.
The government also said Hutyrczyk was a member of the Schutzmannschaft auxiliary police in Baranowicze, Byelorussia (now called Belarus), where it said he actively participated in killing Jews from January 1942 to May 1945 and assisted in persecuting civilians on the basis of race, religion, political opinion or national origin.
At Koldyczewo, 600 Jews, Poles and White Russians were burned alive in the crematorium in 1942, and 22,000 prisoners were murdered within a period of 18 months, according to Martin Gilbert’s book “Holocaust.”
The government did not state whether Hutyrczyk participated in these acts. But it recorded that Hutyrczyk was known as the “black commander” in the concentration camp.
‘OVERWHELMINGLY CLEAR’ EVIDENCE
Judge Ackerman found “overwhelmingly clear and convincing evidence” that the Jewish prisoners at Koldyczewo were physically and mentally persecuted during Hutyrczyk’s stint and that he had assisted their persecution as an armed guard.
In a 1990 telephone interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Hutyrczyk said he did not know what the Schutzmannschaft was and denied having been a guard.
He described Koldyczewo at the time as a military training camp and said he had been “fighting the Communists.”
But included among the papers filed to support the charges against him was a transcript of a deposition which Hutyrczyk gave that same year, in which he admitted having been a uniformed armed guard at Koldyczewo in 1942.
He specifically admitted guarding the perimeter of the camp at night to make sure no Jews escaped. He also admitted training new recruits.
The Nazis trained auxiliary police forces for combat and used them to kill Jews in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Baltics.
Based on Hutyrczyk’s admissions and other uncontrovertible evidence, the government charged Hutyrczyk was ineligible for U.S. immigration and that his citizenship was illegally obtained. Under the Displaced Persons Act, former concentration camp guards were ineligible for U.S. visas.
To date, 43 Nazi persecutors have been stripped of their U.S. citizenship as a result of investigations, and prosecutions by the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations.
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.
