Anton Tittjung, 64, a retired marble craftsman living in Greenfield, Wis., has become the second Milwaukee-area man in five months to face possible revocation of his U.S. citizenship because of his alleged role as a Nazi concentration camp guard.
A motion to revoke Tittjung’s citizenship was filed Aug. 29 in the federal district court in Milwaukee by the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations.
OSI alleges that Tittjung concealed three times from U.S. immigration authorities his service as an armed guard of prisoners at the Gross Raming subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp complex in Austria.
Tittjung, a native of Yugoslavia, is also accused of concealing his membership in the SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann (Death’s Head Battalion).
OSI’s motion states that Tittjung falsely swore that his military service consisted solely of membership in the Prinz Eugen Division of the Waffen SS. Members of that division were deemed eligible for entry into the United States.
Service in the Totenkopf-Sturmbann unit was adjudged as criminal by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, following World War II.
The tribuanal ruled that the TotenkopfSturmbann unit constituted assistance in the Nazi persecution of civilians and membership in a movement hostile to the United States.
OSI notes that during the time Tittjung served at Mauthausen, the camp’s death toll rose to a peak of 400 per day in 1944. In all, thousands of prisoners died there as the result of shooting, gassing, hanging, electrocution, starvation, forced labor, lethal injection and other forms of murder.
KNEW OF KILLINGS
The OSI motion adds that while serving as an armed guard at Gross Raming, Tittjung knew that civilians were being killed there.
According to OSI, the defendant falsely claimed he was a displaced person after the war. He said he had received four months’ infantry and artillery training, fought against the Tito partisans in Yugoslavia and then retreated to the Austria-Yugoslavian border in May 1945.
Tittjung entered the United States from Austria in 1952 under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. In 1955, he successfully reapplied for admission to the United States from Austria, where he had been visiting. In 1973, he received U.S. citizenship.
U.S. Attorney Francis Schmitz will serve as local counsel for the government in the Tittjung case, and federal Judge John Reynolds has been assigned to hear it. Schmitz added that OSI will handle the bulk of the litigation, due to its specialized nature.
According to Schmitz, Tittjung was served with a copy of the complaint on the morning of Sept. 5.
Tittjung could not be reached for comment.
Citizenship revocation proceedings are also pending against Anton Baumann, 77, of West Allis, Wis. He is accused of concealing that he was a guard at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany and the Stutthof camp in Poland.
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