The Justice Department said yesterday that it would not seek a retrial of suspected Nazi war criminal Frank Walus after an appeals court reversed a lower court order to revoke his American citizenship. Walus, 58, a resident of Chicago, was found guilty by a U.S. District Judge in Illinois of having concealed his Nazi activities when he applied for citizenship.
During a four-week non-jury trial in 1978, testimony by 12 witnesses, including six from Israel and the rest from Czestochowa and Kielce in Poland identified Walus as a member of the Gestapo who committed acts of violence against Jews and others in those towns during World War II.
Walus, who is German-born but lived in Poland since the age of 10 contended that the Nazi had pressed him into service as a firm worker when they invaded Poland in 1939 and that he spent the war years near Ulm, Germany, about 1000 miles from the scene of his alleged crimes.
BASIS FOR REVERSAL
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which had granted Walus’ appeal for a new trial last February, reversed the district court order on grounds that documentary evidence discovered in Bavaria and corroborated by six witnesses, confirmed that Walus spent the war in Germany.
Allon Ryan Jr., chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, said, in a joint statement with U.S. Attorney Thomas Sullivan of Chicago. That “The striking absence of corroborating evidence and indeed the undeniable weight of evidence tending to indicate that Walus spent the war years as a farm worker in Germany compels the conclusion that we could not responsibly go forward with the retrial.”
Ryan said the government would recompense Walus for out-of-pocket expenses incurred in his defense but not his attorney fees.
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.
