The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Shofar FTP Archive File: camps//sachsenhausen/schmidt.deport


Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Subject: Former SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann Michael Schmidt Deported
Archve/File: camps/sachsenhausen/schmidt.deport
Last-Modified: 1994/07/14

Here is a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.

 Former Concentration Camp Guard Permanently Leaves U.S.
 To: National Desk, Illinois Correspondent
 Contact: U.S. Department of Justice, 202-514-2007

   WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 [1994. ed.]  -- The Department of Justice
announced today that an admitted SS guard at a Nazi concentration
camp in Germany in World War II, who earlier was stripped of his
United States citizenship by the federal government, has left the
United States and agreed never to return to this country.
   The department said that Michael Schmidt, 69, of Lincolnwood,
Ill., a retired janitor, went to Austria, en route to permanent
residence in Germany, following his admission to federal authorities
that he was legally deportable.
   Schmidt left the U.S. after signing an agreement with the Office
of Special Investigations (OSI) of the Criminal Division of the
department promising never to return to this country and stating that
he did not contest OSI allegations that he:
   1. Participated in the Nazi-sponsored persecution of civilians
while serving as an armed concentration camp guard and member of the
SS-Totenkopf Sturmbann (SS Death's Head Battalion) at Sachsenhausen
concentration camp in Germany.
   2. Misrepresented his wartime activities for the purpose of
gaining admission to the U.S.
   OSI Director Neal M. Sher said Schmidt signed the agreement in
order to avoid trial in a deportation action instituted against him
by OSI in December 1991.  In January 1990, Schmidt was stripped of
his U.S. citizenship by the U.S. District Court in Chicago.
   The court found that Schmidt assisted in the persecution of
Sachsenhausen prisoners on the basis of their race, religion, or
national origin.  The decision was upheld by the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in January 1991.  The U.S. Supreme
Court subsequently refused Schmidt's request to review the case.
   The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was the scene of numerous
atrocities -- including shootings, hangings, gassings, whippings, and
a variety of grotesque medical experiments conducted on U.S.
prisoners of war, Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, Eastern
European nationals and political prisoners.  Of the 200,000 prisoners
interned at Sachsenhausen, more than 100,000 died.
   The Schmidt case is a result of OSI's continuing investigation of
Nazi persecutors residing illegally in the United States, Sher said.
To date, 44 Nazi persecutors have been stripped of U.S. citizenship
as a result of OSI's investigations and prosecutions, and 34 persons
have been removed from the United States.  More than 500 persons
currently are under OSI investigation, Sher said.
 -30-
-- 
Nigel Allen, Toronto, Ontario    ndallen@r-node.pci.on.ca


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