JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MOVES TO REVOKE U.S. CITIZENSHIP
OF FORMER NAZI POLICEMAN

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Christopher A. Wray, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division, announced today that the Justice Department has asked a federal court in Chicago, Illinois, to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a Chicago resident for his role in a Ukrainian police unit that helped administer and annihilate a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.

In a complaint filed today, the Criminal Division’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois allege that Osyp Firishchak, 84, who was born in what is now Ukraine, joined the Nazi-operated Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) in October 1941 and was a member of its 1st Commissariat in L’viv until at least October 1943. During this time, the 1st Commissariat, along with other armed L’viv UAP units, rounded up Jews, imprisoned them in a ghetto, terrorized them, oversaw their forced labor, killed those attempting to escape and delivered others to killing sites for mass execution.

Assistant Attorney General Christopher A. Wray noted, “This case reaffirms the Justice Department’s dedication to the principle that those who helped the Nazi regime carry out its evil designs do not deserve the privilege of American citizenship.”

According to the complaint, Firishchak and other uniformed UAP men enforced Nazi persecutory measures against those whom the Nazis deemed dangerous or undesirable because of their race, religion, national origin or political belief, primarily the city’s Jews. The UAP helped herd Jews at gunpoint into a ghetto in L’viv. UAP men then routinely checked personal identification documents and arrested Jews for failing to produce special work passes or to wear an armband bearing the Star of David symbol.

Between March 1942 and June 1943, with the vital assistance of the UAP, virtually all of the more than 100,000 Jews in L'viv were seized and transported to killing sites, including the Belzec extermination camp, or forced labor camps. Firishchak’s 1st Commissariat unit participated in most, if not all, of these ghetto “reduction” operations.

Firishchak entered the United States in 1949 and became a U.S. citizen in 1954. The complaint asserts that his citizenship should be revoked because his wartime service to Nazi Germany rendered him ineligible for a U.S. immigration visa and because he concealed that service when he applied for both a visa and U.S. citizenship.

“Osyp Firishchak and other members of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police were indispensable accomplices in the Nazis’ systematic and brutal destruction of the Jewish community of L’viv. Had he told the truth after the war, he never would have been permitted to enter this country, much less become a United States citizen,” said OSI Director Eli M. Rosenbaum.

This 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 it began operations in 1979, 73 individuals who assisted in Nazi persecution have been stripped of U.S. citizenship and 59 such persons have been removed from the U.S.

Members of the public are reminded that the complaint contains only allegations.

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