FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CRM THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 1997 (202) 616-2765 TDD (202) 514-1888 U.S. COURT ORDERS DENATURALIZATION OF ILLINOIS MAN FOUND TO HAVE TAKEN PART IN MASSACRE AT NAZI SLAVE LABOR CAMP WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Justice announced today that a federal judge in Chicago has revoked the naturalized U.S. citizenship of an Illinois man who took part in a massacre of Jews while serving as a guard at a Nazi slave labor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II and who subsequently concealed his activities from U.S. officials when he applied to immigrate to the United States on May 24, 1950. In a 58-page decision filed today, U.S. District Court Judge David H. Coar found that Bronislaw Hajda, 73, a retired factory worker living in Schiller Park, Illinois, served in occupied Poland as an armed guard at the SS Training Camp Trawniki, the Treblinka Labor Camp and the SS Streibel Battalion, making him ineligible to enter the United States and hence ineligible for citizenship. "The court's decision," said Eli Rosenbaum, Director of the Office of Special Investigations, "confirms that individuals, like Hajda, who helped the Nazis realize their genocidal ambitions had no right to enter this country, much less to receive the privilege of United States citizenship." The judge specifically found that Hajda "unquestionably" participated in the massacre carried out by the guards when the Nazis liquidated the Treblinka Labor Camp on July 23, 1944, as Allied forces approached. On that day, hundreds of Jewish prisoners were shot at point-blank range in a pit by the camp guards. After the liquidation of Treblinka, Hajda joined the SS Streibel Battalion, which forcibly conscripted Polish civilians as slave laborers to build military fortifications. The court found: The documentary evidence presented by the government is overwhelming. A person with (or using) the same name, birth date, birth place, occupation, nationality, citizenship, and general physical description as defendant, and having parents of the same name as defendant's did, in certain fact, serve as an auxiliary guard in units at Trawniki, Treblinka, and in the SS Battalion Streibel. That same person unquestionably participated in the massacre of Jewish prisoners at Treblinka. The court ruled that the evidence and admitted facts were "sufficient to establish clearly and unequivocally that Wachmann [guard] Hajda and defendant are one and the same." It rejected Hajda's claim of mistaken identity, pointing out that "there are no significant discrepancies between the physical descriptions of Wachmann Hajda and defendant." The court also rejected Hajda's alibi that he had been a prisoner at the Pustkow labor camp and it discredited the testimony of his only corroborating witness, who claimed to have seen defendant at Pustkow. The court noted that the witness "currently lives next door to Hajda's brother . . . and that [his] decision to come forward and testify was sealed over a bottle of vodka." "Hajda's false assertion that he was a victim of, rather than a participant in persecution, is an affront to the thousands of Mr. Hajda's fellow countrymen who perished at the Pustkow labor camp, as well as to the millions of other victims of the Holocaust," Rosenbaum said. The court cited the postwar testimony of Hajda's sister, Kazimiera, that "[m]y brother served in the German military, in the SS" and of his father that "[m]y son Bronislaw Hajda went to Germany to join the SS." The court rejected defendant's claim that the statements of his sister and father may have been coerced. The judge concluded that: . . . Wachmann Hajda and defendant are one and the same and that defendant intentionally misrepresented his activities from January 1943 through April 1945 in order to obtain entry into the United States. . . Defendant's service as an auxiliary in the guard units at Training Camp Trawniki, his assistance in the murder of 300 to 700 Jewish prisoners at Treblinka, his service as an armed guard at Treblinka, and his service in the SS Battalion Streibel, all constituted assistance in the persecution of civil populations. . . The court found that Hajda's wartime service to the Nazis constituted assistance in the persecution of civilian populations and membership or participation in a movement hostile to the United States and to the form of government of the United States. It also said that Hajda misrepresented material facts for the purpose of gaining admission to the United States when he told U.S. immigration authorities that he had spent most of the war in his hometown working as an shoemaker. The court observed that "seeking to discover the acts of a single individual across the temporal expanse of fifty years and a distance of an ocean and half a continent is a daunting task. Yet, through the efforts of the Justice Department and the international community, the activities of Wachmann Hajda have come to light." Rosenbaum said the proceedings to denaturalize Hajda were a result of OSI's ongoing efforts to identify and take legal action against former participants in Nazi persecution residing in this country. Hajda is the 59th Nazi persecutor stripped of U.S. citizenship since OSI began operating in 1979. Some 48 such individuals have been removed from the United States to date. There are more than 300 persons currently under investigation by OSI, according to Rosenbaum. The case was prosecuted by the Criminal Division's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), assisted by the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago. The trial was held last month in Chicago. ##### 97-145