Boleslavs Maikovskis has been ordered deported from the United States for having concealed his past activities as a police official in Nazi-occupied latvia during World War II when he applied for entry into the U.S. in 1951.
The order, issued Monday by the five-member Board of Immigration Appeals, reverses a decision in July, 1983, by a Federal Immigration Judge in New York who ruled that the 80-year-old resident of Mineola, Long Island, was “not deportable, “because Maikovskis’ past conduct did not rise to the “level of depravity”needed to make his alleged crimes” contrary to human decency.”
The Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, responsible for bringing Nazi war criminals to justice in the U.S. appealed the decision issued in a Manhattan court by Judge Francis Lyons.
Maikovskis can appeal the Immigration Board’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and finally to the United States Supreme Court. It was not known whether he would make such an appeal.
Should the final verdict of the legal process be deportation, Maikovskis could be sent back to his country of origin, Latvia, now under the rule of the Soviet Union, which had convicted him in absentia in 1965 of war crimes and sentenced him to death.
Most likely, Maikovskis would probably be allowed to chose a destination as has occurred with past war criminals who have been deported from the U.S. He arrived in the United States from West Germany and could possibly be sent there.
The Immigration Board’s decision is part of an eight-year old legal effort by the Justice Department to deport Maikovskis. The Department has charged that he failed to disclose when he entered the United States in 1951 that he had been a member of the Latvian police guard which, the Department charges, had exterminated about 20,000 Latvian Jews and other Latvian citizens.
Maikovskis has maintained his innocense of the war crimes charges. He declared upon entering this country in 1951 that he had been a bookkeeper during World War II when Latvia was occupied by the Germans.
Maikovskis was born on January 21, 1904 in Stirnience, Latvia, completed his high school education there around 1930 and immediately enlisted in the latvian Army where he became a sergeant . On May 20, 1939, he married Janina Ritins and about that time he joined the Aizsargi, a national guard type organization, according to immigration files.
During the Nazi occupation of Latvia in 1941, Maikovskis held the rank of captain in the Alzsargi and “helped the German occupation authorities for a few months restoring order in his country, ” the file says, adding, “When the Germans evacuated Latvia in 1944, the subject claimed they ordered him to do likewise and eventually settled in Germany.
Maikovskis’home in Mineola was firebombed by unidentified assailants in September, 1981. The home was slightly damaged. In August 1978, the alleged war criminal was shot in his home by unidentified assailants. He was hit in the right knee by a bullet but he recovered soon afterwards.
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.
