FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                        CRM
WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 1996                           (202) 514-2008
                                                  (202) 514-1888



      FORMER NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP GUARD LOSES CITIZENSHIP


     Washington, D.C.-- The Department of Justice announced today
that United States District Judge Horace W. Gilmore stripped a
Detroit area man of his naturalized U.S. citizenship because he
concealed from U.S. naturalization officials his World War II
service as an armed SS guard at the Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen
concentration camps and his armed SS guard service during the
forced evacuation of concentration camp prisoners between
concentration camps.      
     The Criminal Division's Office of Special Investigations
(OSI) commenced the denaturalization case against Hammer in
federal district court in Detroit in December 1994.  The
government's complaint alleged that during World War II, Hammer,
74, a retired foundry supervisor living in Sterling Heights,
Michigan, served in the Nazi SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann (Death's Head
Battalion) as an armed guard of prisoners at at least these two
Nazi concentration camps, and while transporting inmates between
camps.
     Ruling from the bench this afternoon within two hours of the
conclusion of the four-day trial, Judge Gilmore found that Hammer
served as an armed SS guard at the Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen
concentration camps and as a guard on prisoner transports, and
that Hammer concealed this service when he applied for
naturalized citizenship in 1963.  During the naturalization
application process, Hammer executed a sworn affidavit in which
he specifically stated that he had never been a concentration
camp guard and had never sent anyone to a concentration camp. 
The Court found that Hammer fraudulently misrepresented his
wartime activities in this sworn statement.
     OSI Director Eli M. Rosenbaum called today's ruling "a
gratifying victory" and noted that Hammer is the 54th person
denaturalized in the Nazi cases brought by the Office of Special
Investigations since the unit's creation in 1979. 
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