The civil suit filed in federal District Court in Cleveland Aug. 24 to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a 57-year-old Ford Motor Company mechanic for alleged atrocities at the Treblinka concentration camp in Poland during World War II, marks the seventh such case brought by the U.S. government against suspected Nazi war criminals in this country.
John Demjanjuk, born in the Ukraine and a resident of the U.S. since 1952, is accused of the atrocities while serving as a guard at Treblinka. Demjanjuk, according to an affidavit filed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, is said to have used swords to push Jews into gas chambers and stabbed or severed parts of their bodies before pushing them into the chambers.
Demjanjuk and the other six face deportation suits if the government is successful in revoking their citizenship. The others are Feodor Fedorenko, 70, a Ukrainian, charged in Miami; Mike Pasker, 76, a Lithuanian, charged in Los Angeles; Serge Kowalchuk, 57 and his brother Mykola Kowalchuk, 52, both born in Poland, charged in Philadelphia; Frank Walus, 55, born in Germany; and Bishop Valerian Trifa, 63, who led the fascist lron Guard in Rumania.
Deportation proceedings have been started against four permanent resident aliens who are not naturalized citizens. They are: Velis A. Hazners, 72, Albany, N.Y.; Bronius Kaminskas, 74, Hartford, Conn.; Boleslav Maikovskis, 73, New York and Karlis Detlavs, 66, Baltimore.
CHARGES AGAINST DEMJANJUK
The Justice Department suit charged that Demjanjuk, who lives in the Cleveland suburb of Seven Hills, lied on his 1951 application for an immigration visa when he denied that he had taken part in the persecution of any person because of race, religion or national origin. The suit also said he had with-held the fact that he had been a member of the Ukrainian guard which served with the German SS guards in Treblinka. The INS has also filed an affidavit charging that at the time of the atrocities Demjanjuk was 22 and was known as lvan Grozny.
The government said that Demjanjuk entered the U.S. under the Displaced Persons Act in 1952 and become a citizen in Cleveland on Nov. 14,1958.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
