A U.S. federal judge revoked the U.S. citizenship of a former Nazi concentration camp guard. The government said that Joseph Wittje, 84, who lives in Illinois, served as a guard with the SS Death’s Head Guard battalion at Sachsenhausen during the war — and that he lied about his service when he applied for U.S. citizenship in 1959. The Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, its Nazi-hunting unit, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois brought the charges. On Aug. 27, Judge Suzanne Conlon canceled Wittje’s certificate of naturalization and ordered him to turn it over to the attorney general.
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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.
