The former chief of the Nazi-sponsored Lithuanian security police has been stripped of his U.S. citizenship as a result of a summary judgment issued by a federal judge.
The prosecution of Aleksandras Lileikis, 88, has become the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations highest- profile case, Eli Rosenbaum, OSI director, said in an interview Tuesday.
Rosenbaum called Lileikis’ denaturalization an “enormously gratifying victory.”
The OSI’s next goal is to deport Lileikis from the united States, Rosenbaum said. “We will move as swiftly as we can,” he said.
Lileikis, who for years have lived in Norwood, Mass., came to the United States in 1955 and became a citizen 1976.
He has acknowledged that he was the former head of the Lithuanian security police, also known as the Saugamas, in the Vilnius province. He held the position from August 1941 to July 1944.
U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns, who issued the judgment last Friday, said, “The undisputed fact show that as chief of the Vilnius Saugamas, Lileikis ordered the arrest of persons for such crimes as `suspected of being a Jew,’ `escaping from the ghetto’ and `hiding’ a 6-year-old child.
“The undisputed record also shows that Lileikis ordered these same persons removed from hard labor prison under his direct control and turned over to either the Ypatingas Burys (Special Detachment) or the German Security Police.”
The turnover of these people resulted in their execution.
Lileikis’ lawyers argued that he had saved the life of a Jew. But Stearns said in his judgment, “The fact, if it is one, that Lileikis had saved a solitary Jew from destruction does not atone for the tens of thousands who died under his command of the Saugamas.”
Lileikis has the right to appeal the judge’s decision.
The summary judgment means that the judge sided with the OSI without requiring a trial.
The OSI used as evidence documents found in the Lithuanian Central State Archives.
At least 55,000 Vilnius Jews and 220,000 Lithuanian Jews were killed during the Holocaust.
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