A former Ohio businessman, accused by the U.S. government of having served in the Death’s Head Battalion of the Nazi Waffen SS, was stripped of his U.S. citizenship last week, after failing to respond to charges filed in federal court.
U.S. District Court Judge John Pratt issued a default judgment Nov. 27, ordering Jakob Frank Denzinger, 65, of Akron, Ohio, denaturalized.
The Justice Department believes that Denzinger is now living in West Germany, a department source said Monday.
The source added that there is no particular action the West German government could take against Denzinger, since its statute of limitations has expired for all Nazi crimes but murder.
Denzinger is alleged to have actively engaged in persecution while serving from May 1943 to April 1945 as a guard at various concentration camps, including Mauthausen in Austria, Plaszow and Auschwitz in Poland, and Oranienburg and Buchenwald in Germany.
The allegations were contained in a complaint filed in August by the local U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which seeks to denaturalize and deport Nazi war criminals living in the United States.
OSI maintains Denzinger willfully concealed his SS service from the Immigration and Naturalization Service in obtaining citizenship in 1972.
Denzinger was born in Croatia, Yugoslavia, He entered the United States on Oct. 30, 1956, after having received a visa two months earlier from the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt, West Germany, the Justice Department said.
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