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. # # # 96-231