A Massachusetts man who belonged to a Nazi unit that helped liquidate the Warsaw ghetto will be deported. Vladas Zajanckauskas, 92, of Sutton, Mass., served at the SS base in Trawniki, Poland, and took part in the April-May 1943 operation dubbed “Operation Rinhard.” In a decision reported this week by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which litigated the case, Boston Judge Wayne R. Iskra wrote that Zajanckauskas “admitted that Trawniki men sent to Warsaw stood in the cordon to prevent Jews from escaping.” They also “guarded the transit square where captured Jews awaited transportation to labor and concentration camps, conducted house-to-house searches for hidden Jews, skirmished with resistance fighters, and took part in the shooting of some captured Jews.” Zajanckauskas was one of the “top-ranked” individuals in his sub-unit, the judge wrote.
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