U.S. Strips Two Ex-nazis of Naturalization Papers

Two Nazi war criminals living in the United States, Stefan Reger and Juris Kauls, were ordered denaturalized by two different judges Thursday.

Reger, 63, of Yardville, N.J., was denaturalized by U.S. District Court Judge Clarkson Fisher in Newark, N.J., on the basis of his service as an SS guard at the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) concentration camp between 1943 and 1945.

Kauls, 75, of Sun City, Ariz., was denaturalized by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Bloomfield in Phoenix by a default judgment based on Kauls’ failure to respond to government charges that he served at a Nazi concentration camp in Latvia during World War II, and concealed that service from federal immigration officials.

The two actions were among the 29 cases pending before U.S. courts brought by U.S. district attorneys and the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which searches out and tries to prosecute accused Nazi war criminals living in the United States.

Reger, who has fled to West Germany, was not there for the verdict, but admitted in sworn testimony that he had served as a SS guard at Auschwitz.

Born in Yugoslavia, Reger immigrated to the United States in 1952 and became a citizen in 1957. He had contended in his immigration forms that he had simply been a combat soldier in the German army.

Kauls was prosecuted with the aid of official papers that were stored in the Berlin Document Center in West Berlin — captured intact from the Nazis by the U.S. Army — which showed “handwritten resumes Kauls had submitted to Nazis in which he admitted to being inspector of guards at the Riga concentration camp,” an OSI source said.

Kauls entered the United States in 1954 and became a U.S. citizen in 1960. Neal Sher, OSI director, said Kauls, like Reger, has left the United States and will not be allowed to return.