In its second move against an alleged Nazi war criminal within the last week, the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations initiated proceedings Monday to deport a Milwaukee-area man who served as a guard at Nazi concentration camps in World War II.
The department moved to deport Anton Baumann, 81, on the grounds that he had concealed his service with the Nazis as an SS guard at the Stutthot and Buchenwald camps when he arrived in the United States in 1950 and, later, when he applied for citizenship.
Baumann’s citizenship was revoked on these grounds in May 1991.
Last Friday, the government revoked the U.S. citizenship of Anton Bless, another former Nazi concentration camp guard who had already fled the country.
Bless, an ethnic German from Yugoslavia and former resident of Lecanto, Fla., fled to Germany, before the OSI moved against him in September.
In filing its cases, OSI charges misrepresentation and the fact that the person’s wartime persecutions of people by race, religion, national origin or politics render him ineligible for entry into the United States or to hold U.S. citizenship.
In its action against Baumann, a retired carpenter living in West Allis, Wis., OSI charged he had concealed his service in the SS Death’s Head Battalions at the concentration camps.
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