FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CRM

THURSDAY, JANUARY 4, 2007 (202) 514-2007

WWW.USDOJ.GOV TDD (202) 514-1888

Immigration Judge Orders Deportation

of Wisconsin
Man Who Helped Carry Out 1943 Nazi
Mass Murder of Jews
WASHINGTON – An immigration judge in Chicago has ordered the removal of a
Wisconsin man who, by his own admission, stood guard during a Nazi mass killing
operation in occupied Poland in 1943, with orders to “shoot to kill” any still-living
Jewish victim who attempted escape, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher for
the Criminal Division announced today.

Immigration judge Jennie L. Giambastiani ordered the removal of Josias Kumpf, 81,
of Racine, Wisconsin, from the United States because of his admitted wartime
service as an armed SS Death’s Head guard at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
in Germany; at an SS labor camp in Trawniki, Poland, where 8,000 Jewish men,
women, and children were murdered in a single day as part of a two-day mass
murder operation involving 42,000 victims at three camps; and at construction sites
in Nazi-occupied France at which prisoners built launching platforms for Germany's
V-1 and V-2 missile attacks on England. Judge Giambastiani concluded that
Kumpf's service as an armed Nazi SS guard “unquestionably establishes by clear
and convincing evidence that he was actively and personally involved in the
persecution of others.”

“This case reflects the Justice Department’s commitment to the principle that those
who helped the Nazi regime carry out its infamous genocidal designs are unfit to
live in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Fisher.

Kumpf was born in what is now Serbia, immigrated to the United States from
Austria in 1956 under a program intended to benefit post-war refugees in Europe,
and became a U.S. citizen in 1964.

The immigration judge's decision follows the government’s successful prosecution

of a denaturalization case against Kumpf in federal court, an effort that began in
September 2003. The denaturalization and removal cases were prosecuted by the
Criminal Division’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI).
In May 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit unanimously
affirmed a lower court ruling that Kumpf had not been eligible for immigration to
the United States because of his wartime service to Nazi Germany, and that, as a
result, his naturalized U.S. citizenship had been illegally procured. The appellate
court quoted sworn testimony by Kumpf in which he described his duties as a guard
during the Nov. 3, 1943, massacre at the SS labor camp at Trawniki. As Kumpf
explained, he “was watching them shoot some people.” Some of the victims were
“still halfway alive,” he acknowledged, and if any of them attempted escape, his
assignment was “shoot them to kill, shoot them to kill.”

“Josias Kumpf and other members of the SS Death's Head guard battalions were
indispensable accomplices in Nazi mass murder,” said OSI Director Eli M.
Rosenbaum. “Had Kumpf told the truth after the war, he never would have been
permitted to enter this country.”

The immigration judge's order directs that Kumpf be deported to Germany, Austria,
or Serbia. Kumpf selected Germany as his preferred country for removal.

The case was litigated by OSI trial attorneys Stephen Paskey and Adam Fels, and it
is a result of OSI’s ongoing efforts to identify, investigate and take legal action
against participants in Nazi persecution who reside in the United States. Since OSI
began operations in 1979, it has won cases against 104 individuals who participated
in Nazi crimes of persecution. In addition, over 170 individuals implicated in
wartime Axis crimes have been blocked from entering the United States in recent
years as a result of OSI’s “Watch List” program, which is enforced in cooperation
with the Department of Homeland Security.

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