Justice Department Unit to Appeal Ruling by Judge on War Criminal

The Office of Special Investigation (OST) of the Justice Department will appeal Judge Anthony DeGaeto’s denial of its case against accused Nazi war criminal Vilis Hazners. According to Allan Ryan Jr., Deputy Director of the OSI, a notice of appeal has been filed and the appeal brief is due April 10 at the Board of Immigration Appeals in Washington.

The Justice Department had asked DeGaeto who is on Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) judge, to disqualify himself from the case last fail after a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report lost Aug. 24 revealed that two years earlier he had remarked from the bench that Jews always answer questions with questions. DeGaeto did not choose, this option.

DeGaeto ruled on Feb. 27 that INS could not deport Hazners, a 74-year-old resident of Dresden, N.Y., because the government had failed to prove that he had concealed his participation in the Holocaust. The judge told the, JTA his ruling was moiled on that dote from his New York City office to lvars. Berzins, Hazner’s attorney, and the OSI.

Ryan acknowledged to the JTA that he received notice of the decision on Feb. 29, but the press was not apprised of the situation. An inquiry from The Knickerbocker News, on Albany newspaper, brought the decision to light.

HISTORY OF THE CASE

The case against the native of Latvia began here in January, 1977, and the following fall the INS brought some eight Israeli witnesses, all survivors of the Riga ghetto, to testify that Hazners had committed Nazi atrocities while serving as a Latvian police officer and member of the Latvian Waffen SS. Hazners denied these charges.

In the spring of 1978, the hearing was postponed to arrange for testimony from defense witnesses who were unable to travel from such locations as Chicago, Stockholm, Sweden and Australia. The following spring, the government was granted one postponement to bring a West German expert on Latvian war crimes to testify on its behalf. When the expert could not appear as scheduled because he was working on another Nazi code in Europe, a second postponement request was denied.

The case was closed in Ma, 1979, and the government filed its brief with DeGaeto in June. Berzins, of Babylon, N.Y., then had 30 days to file his brief on behalf of Hazners. He was granted on extension of several weeks by the judge, but by August both briefs were in DeGaeto’s hands. A decision was anticipated from two to six months after that date.

In his Feb. 27 decision, the judge was critical of the work of the INS attorneys and questioned the credibility of the Israeli witnesses, according to Ryan.

OTHER SETBACKS IN GOVERNMENT’S EFFORTS

The Hazners decision followed three other February setbacks in the government’s efforts to denaturalize and deport Nazi war criminals. In Baltimore, the government lost its deportation case against Karlis Detlavs, an admitted member of the Latvian 55 who is a friend of Hazners and also represented by Berzins. Ryan said his office had filed a notice to appeal, the Detlavs decision, with an April 4 deadline to present the brief to the Board of Immigration Appeals.

In addition, the Supreme Court granted a petition for certiorari to Feodor Fedorenko of Florfda, an admitted treblinka 55 guard, and the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded a decision against alleged Nazi war criminal Frank Walus of Chicago. The Fedorenko case, which was decided against the defendant when the Court of Appeals overruled a lower court decision, will now be reviewed by the Supreme Court. The Walus case will have to be retried.

With the Hazners case decided, there is now no active Nazi war criminal case in a U.S. court. Of the 16 cases currently under litigation, all are either in pre-trial discovery or in various stages of appeal. The OSI is investigating the files of some 400 alleged Nazi war criminals to determine whether they are trouble.