Mass. man to be deported for wartime past

[Heidi]

Source: MSNBC

Updated: 7:26 p.m. ET Aug. 16, 2007
BOSTON - An immigration judge has ordered a 91-year-old retired factory worker deported to his native Lithuania because he lied about his part in the Nazi destruction of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto in 1943, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

“Vladas Zajanckauskas was an accomplice in Nazi mass murder,” said Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations. “Had he told the truth after the war, he never would have been permitted to enter this country.”

<snip>

Immigration Judge Wayne R. Iskra’s order, issued Aug. 2 and delivered to the Justice Department on Tuesday, ended an appeal, but the department said Zajanckauskas hasn’t yet left the country. The order comes more than two years after a federal judge revoked his U.S. citizenship.

Zajanckauskas, of Sutton, 40 miles west of Boston, denied he was in Warsaw at the time and said his service was limited to working the bar at the Nazi training camp in Trawniki, Poland.


Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20305047/

[countmyvote4real]

1. Maybe one day we'll see some justice for the current crop of war criminals n/t

[bluestateguy]

2. His name is too hard to pronouce anyway

Given his lack of roots in Lithuania now, this will probably function as a de facto death sentence for him, and that's not going to keep me awake at night.

[acmavm]

3. Why is deportation his only punishment? If they satisfactorily

in a court of law that he was an accomplice to mass murder of innocent people, why is he not going to be punished harshly? I understand that he's 91 and that he will represent a costly burden to whoever would chose to incarcerate his rotten ass, but why does money trump morality? I know what bush says, I don't care. This man has had a long life. His victims didn't. They died in horrible ways.

This just pisses me off.

[Igel]

4. They didn't try him for what he did overseas.

They only introduced enough evidence, I'm guessing, to show that he lied and therefore when he immigrated he did so illegally. They apparently didn't prove that he was one of the ones that did horrible things, good luck finding witnesses for *that*; they just proved that he lied. He wound up admitting that he worked as a guard at Trawniki; guards from there did horrible things in Warsaw, but not all of them were equally bad. How bad his behavior was is unknown, and, frankly, not the concern of the court.

Just admitting that he lied makes him an illegal immigrant, caused his citizenship to be voided. As an illegal immigrant, he needs to be deported, even though he's been in the US for 57 years and was a productive member of society.

[acmavm]

5. Seriously, I understand the the deportion issue, and the trial. What

I'm asking is why the hell is he getting away with what he did? Why will no court take it upon themselves to right this monstrous wrong?

[bleedingheart]

6. lack of evidence?

he may have been a member of that guard unit...but he may have only done that...guard prisoners...

from the article...

"Zajanckauskas was a member of the Lithuanian army, then the Soviet army when that country annexed Lithuania in 1940. He became a German prisoner of war a year later before being recruited for German service in 1942."

So the guy was in the Lithuanian army..(Lithuania was free from about 1921 until the Soviets rolled in in 1940)...when the Soviets came in they started conscripting..I know this because my sister's father was smuggled out of Lithuania at the time to avoid being captured and conscripted into the Soviet Army...(Lithuanians hated the Russians)...

Then in 1942 is is a POW...and he is recruited for service...(now what kind of recruitment.."either join or we shoot you"...or did he go gleefully...)

Without evidence that he was personally shooting prisoners and torturing them...he may have been there ...but what if he was just as much a victim of circumstance? The Nazis and the Soviets were not nice people...they would shoot you if you didn't go along...how many people are brave enough to say .."no thank you" and take a bullet in the brain?

Now if there is evidence he was a butcher..then I say he should stand trial..you might be forced to be a guard..but no one forces people to be sadists..

[Posteritatis]

7. I assume he's in for a ride when he gets "home" one way or another (nt)

[Behind the Aegis]

8. US orders Nazi officer back to Lithuania

Source: Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON (AFP)---A US immigration judge ordered a former Nazi officer who took part in the "brutal liquidation" of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto in 1943, deported to his native Lithuania, the US Justice Department announced Thursday.

Judge Wayne Iskra found Vladas Zajanckauskas served in a unit that "stood in the cordon to prevent Jews from escaping, guarded the transit square where captured Jews awaited transportation to labor and concentration camps, conducted house-to-house searches for hidden Jews, skirmished with resistance fighters, and took part in the shooting of some captured Jews."

The judge said that Zajanckauskas’ was a top-ranked member of a sub-unit that committed "terrible crimes," including murder and rape.

According to the Justice Department, the Warsaw Ghetto had been home to about 40,000 Jews. Some 7,000 were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp, thousands others died fighting and the rest were forced into concentration and labor camps.


Read more: http://www.ejpress.org/article/19304

[CoffeeCat]

9. Why are they sending him back now?

Cheney and Junior must have learned all they can from him and
now they want him off the payroll.

"Time for you to go! Thanks for the pointers, but I think
we can take it from here!".

[saigon68]

10. Zajanckauskas, who was born in Lithuania in 1915,

Why did no one charge him with Rape and Murder

And let him live free as a bird until he is 92 years old?

[rockymountaindem]

11. Good riddance

but it seems he'll never face justice.

[ceile]

12. He's 92.

Why send him back? Why not just jail him here?

[Solo_in_MD]

13. Has Lithuiania agreed to accept him?

That has been a problem in the past...no place to send them to.