Osi Files Case Against Michigan Man Said to Have Been Ss Guard at Camps

Forging ahead with prosecutions against alleged Nazi war criminals, the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations has launched proceedings to denaturalize a third American citizen in a week.

The Nazi-hunting unit filed suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, against Ferdinand Hammer, a 73-year-old retired tool and die maker from Sterling Heights, Mich.

OSI charges that when he applied to immigrate to the United States in 1955, Hammer concealed his service as a guard at Auschwitz, as a guard of prisoners on transports and as a member of the SS Death’s Head Battalion.

The complaint against Hammer, who was born in Croatia, alleges that he served as a guard at the Auschwitz death camp until just prior to its liberation in 1945 by Allied troops.

The complaint also charges that Hammer escorted prisoners during their forced evacuation from Auschwitz, in Poland, to the Sachsenhausen camp, in Germany. According to the complaint, Hammer then served as an armed guard at Sachsenhausen until he was assigned to guard a transport of prisoners to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

The opening of proceedings against Hammer follows the Dec. 7 filing of a complaint against Algimantas Dailide of Brecksville, Ohio, who is charged with having served in the Nazi-sponsored Lithuanian security police in Vilnius during World War II; and the Dec. 9 filing against Wiatcheslaw (Chester) Rydlinskis of Bloomingdale, III., who is charged with having been an SS Death’s Head Battalion guard at Auschwitz and Buchenwald camps.

OSI is currently investigating more than 300 persons for war crimes and has to date striped 50 Nazi persecutors of their U.S. citizenship. Of the 50, 42 have been removed from the United States since OSI began operating in 1979.