FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE	OSI

TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 1998	(202) 616-2777

	TDD (202) 514-1888







APPELLATE COURT UNANIMOUSLY AFFIRMS DENATURALIZATION OF
PARTICIPANT IN NAZI MASSACRE







	WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A federal appellate court has agreed
with a lower court decision revoking the citizenship of an
Illinois man who helped massacre Jews during World War II, the
Justice Department announced today.  The man, who served as a
guard at a Nazi slave labor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland,
unlawfully concealed his activities from U.S. officials when he
applied to immigrate to the U.S. after the war.

	The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the Seventh
Circuit Court of Appeals, issued on Friday, affirmed a U.S.
District Court decision last April stripping citizenship from
Bronislaw Hajda, 73, a retired factory worker living in Schiller
Park, Illinois.  Hajda immigrated to the U.S. in 1950.

	In the affirmed lower court decision, Judge David H. Coar
ruled that Hajda served in Nazi-occupied Poland as an armed guard
at the SS Training Camp Trawniki and the Treblinka Labor Camp. 
The court said he participated in a July 1944, massacre of Jewish
prisoners at Treblinka and later served in the SS Streibel
Battalion, making him ineligible to enter the U.S. and ineligible
for citizenship. 

	"This decision confirms that we can still secure a measure
of justice in these tragic cases, despite the passage of so many
years," said Eli M. Rosenbaum, Director of the Office of Special
Investigations.

	Rosenbaum said the proceedings to denaturalize Hajda were a
result of OSI's ongoing efforts to identify and take legal action
against former participants in Nazi persecution residing in this
country.

	Hajda is one of 60 Nazi persecutor stripped of U.S.
citizenship since the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) was
created in 1979.  To date, 48 such individuals have been removed
from the United States.  Some 300 persons are currently under
investigation by OSI, according to Rosenbaum.

	The trial court, whose decision was affirmed Friday, had
found that on January 9, 1943, Hajda entered the Trawniki
Training Camp, where Nazis trained concentration camp guards,
including "practice" guarding Jewish prisoners at a nearby labor
camp.  On March 2, 1943, Hajda was transferred to the notorious
Treblinka Labor Camp, where inmates were subjected to grueling
labor, inadequate food and medical care and routine brutality.  

	The trial court also determined that on or about July 22,
1944, guards at Treblinka massacred the remaining 300-700 Jewish
prisoners in the face of the advancing Red Army, and that all of
the guards on duty that day--including Hajda--participated in the
massacre.

	After the massacre, the trial court said, Hajda served in
the SS Streibel Battalion, recruiting and guarding forced Polish
laborers building fortifications against the Russian advance.

	In the Friday decision, the appellate court affirmed the
trial court's ruling that the government's documentary evidence
was "overwhelming."  The evidence included seven captured German
wartime rosters documenting Hajda's service at the Trawniki Labor
Camp, the Treblinka Labor Camp and in the SS Streibel Battalion;
statements of admitted Treblinka camp guards who named Hajda as a
fellow camp guard; and statements of Hajda's father and sister to
Polish authorities, in connection with their own prosecution for
collaboration with the Germans, acknowledging that Hajda had
served with the SS, the notorious Nazi security force.

	The case was prosecuted by the Criminal Division's OSI, with
the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's office in Chicago.  The
trial was held last March in Chicago.

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