GOVERNMENT MOVES TO DEPORT NEW YORK CITY AREA MAN
FOR INVOLVEMENT IN NAZI MASS MURDER OF JEWS

WASHINGTON, DC - Assistant Attorney General Christopher A. Wray of the Criminal Division announced today that the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security have initiated removal proceedings in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to deport Jakob “Jack” Reimer, 86, a retired New York City-area businessman living in Fort Lee, for his involvement in a wartime Nazi massacre of unarmed Jewish civilians and his participation in the brutal liquidation of the Jewish ghettos in Warsaw and Czestochowa, Poland.

“As found by the Court, Reimer’s demonstrated role in one of the most infamous chapters of the Holocaust - the destruction of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto - along with other acts of persecution, make him ineligible for the privilege of continued residence in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Wray. “We will seek to remove him from this country as swiftly as the legal process allows.”

Reimer immigrated to the United States in 1952 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1959. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously affirmed a decision of the federal district court in Manhattan revoking Reimer’s U.S. citizenship on the basis of his wartime involvement in Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution. A charging document filed by the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at DHS states that Reimer should be deported on the basis of the facts proven by the government during the denaturalization case.

In revoking Reimer’s citizenship in 2002, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence McKenna concluded that Reimer had engaged in “concrete personal persecutorial” conduct on behalf of the Nazi occupation forces in Poland while serving in an SS auxiliary unit during World War II. In addition to his role in the ghetto liquidations, the court found that Reimer fired his rifle during a mass-shooting of civilians who had been forced into a pit. The court also noted that Reimer received four promotions and was decorated with a Nazi award for meritorious service.OSI Director Eli M. Rosenbaum stated: “While faithfully serving the SS as a non-commissioned officer, Reimer, by his own admission, led his men on a mission to perpetrate a mass killing of Jews. His proven culpability in the Nazi regime’s genocidal reign of terror requires his removal from this country.” The Reimer case is a result of OSI’s ongoing efforts to identify, investigate and take legal action against former participants in Nazi persecution who reside in the United States. Since OSI began operations in 1979, it has won cases against 99 individuals who assisted in Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution. In addition, more than 170 individuals who sought to enter the United States in recent years have been blocked from doing so as a result of OSI's “Watch List” program, which is enforced in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security.

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