A number of Jewish organizations have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a decision revoking the citizenship of a former Nazi death camp guard who admitted lying about his wartime past.
A friend of the court brief, filed jointly by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Committee, the American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates and Nazi Victims and the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, pointed out that Feodor Fedorenko, in failing to disclose his service as a Treblinka camp guard had avoided an investigation that would have almost certainly barred him from this country. Instead, Fedorenko, a resident of Florida, was able to live in this country for 29 years, avoiding being called to account for his Treblinka activities.
“During the time that Fedorenko was a guard at Treblinka,” Seymour Reich, chairman of ADL’s Civil Rights Committee, quoted the brief as saying, “three quarters of a million Jews were killed. We speak for these Jews and submit that a just result in this case is vital to insure that their memory and the honor of Treblinka and the Holocaust are not forgotten.”
A U.S. district court judge in Florida ruled in 1978 that Fedorenko could keep his citizenship despite his coverup — which occurred twice, once when he applied for a visa to enter the U.S. in 1949 and the second time, in 1970, when he applied for citizenship.
Fedorenko claimed he didn’t know Jews were being killed at Treblinka and denied testimony by six Israeli survivors that they had seen him torture and shoot prisoners there during his one-year service as a guard. He said he had been a former in Poland from 1937 to 1942, when he went to Germany to work as a laborer for the duration of the war.
The lower court’s decision was reversed by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ordered that Fedorenko’s citizenship be revoked. He then appealed to the Supreme Court, where the case will be argued in the court’s fall term.
In a statement accompanying the brief, ADL said the “case presents a serious challenge to the capacity of the United States government to fulfill its immigration and naturalization functions, as well as to the process by which Nazi war criminals are brought to justice.”
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