Konrad Kalejs, an Australian citizen who was deported from the United States for failing to disclose his wartime activities in Nazi occupied Latvia, received a low-key government reaction upon his arrival here this week.
In most respects, the 80-year-old Kalejs was treated as an ordinary citizen reentering Australia, despite calls by the Australian Jewish community for an urgent investigation of charges against him.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry wrote to the government arguing that “there is a compelling case” to “consider all remedies available” if grounds are found to prosecute Kalejs in this country.
Australian Attorney General Michael Lavarch said the federal police would review the case, which first came before Australian investigators eight years ago. And Brian Swift, the police media liaison, confirmed that the police were assessing whether there are grounds to reopen the case.
Robert Greenwood, the first head of Australia’s Special Investigations Unit, who had conducted the earlier Australian inquiry, said the Kalejs case had not been fully examined in the past and would be “of great interest now.”
Kalejs’ case was litigated by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations and carried out by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Eli Rosenbaum, acting director of the OSI, said, “We have shared all of our evidence with the Australian authorities.”
Kalejs immigrated to Australia from Germany after World War II and became a naturalized Australian citizen in the 1950s. He immigrated to the United States in 1959 and omitted any reference to his wartime membership in the Arajs Kommando, a mobile killing unit in Nazi-occupied Latvia.
Kalejs was a company commander of the notorious squad, which killed Jews, Gypsies and others. Kommando founder Viktor Arajs died in a German prison in 1988 while serving a life sentence for the murder of at least 13,000 people. He had implicated Kalejs under questioning.
Efforts to deport Kalejs from the United States began in 1984.
Knowing that deportation proceedings were about to be brought against him, Kalejs left the United States with $350,000 in cash and assumed a new identity.
However, he returned and was found living in Florida, following a six-month manhunt. Arrested as a fugitive, he was released from jail after a friend connected to the Arajs Kommando posted bond of $750,000 in cash.
His arrest in 1985 in Florida sparked concern here that should he be deported, Australia had no laws under which he could be tried.
In 1988, Australian war crimes legislation was amended to allow trials of individuals living in Australia against whom there was evidence of involvement in crimes against humanity during the Nazi occupation of Europe.
However, no individual who has been brought before the Australian court on such charges has been convicted, and this country’s war crimes investigations unit has been closed.
Kalejs had lived in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka and St. Petersburg, Fla.
He was found deportable after a 1988 trial before a U.S. immigration judge. This finding was upheld in appeal to the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals and the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago.
In March, the U.S. Supreme Court refused another bid to hear the case.
Last Friday, the 7th Circuit granted OSI the right to deport Kalejs.
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.
