FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CRM
FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 1998
(202) 514-2008
WWW.USDOJ.GOV
TDD (202) 514-1888

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT INITIATED REMOVAL PROCEEDINGS AGAINST

FORMER GUARD AT NAZI SLAVE LABOR CAMP

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Department of Justice has

initiated deportation proceedings against an Illinois
man who was found to have participated in a massacre
of Jews while serving as a guard at a Nazi slave
labor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War
II.

The charging document, filed August 7 in U.S.

Immigration Court in Chicago by the Criminal
Division's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and
the Chicago Office of the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service, alleged that Bronislaw Hajda,
74, 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 from 1943 to 1945.

"Bronislaw Hajda committed ghastly crimes against

innocent civilians, and his continued presence in the
United States is an affront to the memory of these
victims of Nazi persecution," said OSI Director Eli
M. Rosenbaum. "The initiation of removal proceedings
against Mr. Hajda is an important step towards
bringing this case to a just conclusion."

In 1997, the U.S. District Court in Chicago stripped

Hajda of his U.S. citizenship finding that his
wartime service and misrepresentation of that service
to U.S. immigration officials disqualified him for
the U.S. visa he received in 1950. In March 1998,
that decision was upheld by the Seventh Circuit Court
of Appeals.

The court papers cite the findings of the District

Court who 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 by the camp guards at point-blank
range in a pit. 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 that Hajda was ineligible for a visa to enter
the United States because, among other reasons, his
wartime service and activities constituted assistance
in the persecution of civilians and membership or
participation in a movement hostile to the United
States during the war.

The papers further allege that Hajda was ineligible

to immigrate to the United States because he
intentionally misrepresented and concealed his
wartime activities when applying for a visa to enter
the United States.

Rosenbaum said that the proceedings to remove 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. "The
court's decision," he stated after the entry of the
denaturalization order in 1997, "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."

To date, 60 Nazi persecutors have been stripped of

U.S. citizenship since the OSI began operations in
1979, and 48 such individuals have been removed from
the United States. There are some 300 persons
currently under investigation by OSI.

###

98-399