Karl Linnas, a 61 year old-Long Island resident, will go on trial in Federal Court in Westbury Tuesday for concealing his activities as commandant of a Nazi concentration camp when he entered the United States in 1951 and became a citizen in 1960.
The charges brought by the U.S. Justice Department which seeks to revoke Linnas’ citizenship, accuse him of participating in the persecution of thousands of “innocent persons,” primarily Jews, at the Tartu camp in Estonia from 1941-1943. There was no gas chamber at the camp but many inmates were executed by firing squad and others were tortured, the Justice Department said. According to a Department official it was Linnas who prepared the “death lists” and selected people who he ordered shot.
When he applied for entry into the U.S., Linnas misrepresented his background by claiming to have been a university student in Estonia during the war, the Justice Department charged.
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