Immigration Judge Orders Deportation of ...

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Immigration Judge Orders Deportation of Wisconsin Man Who Helped Carry Out 1943 Nazi Mass Murder of Jews

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). Read more at usdoj.gov

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