NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Several members of New York’s Congressional delegation on Thursday sent a letter to the U.S. State Department urging for the release of information on the failed deportation of convicted Nazi war criminals.
In particular, the members are seeking information on nine cases in which Nazis – who were hiding in the United States – were convicted and stripped of their citizenship in the 1970s after inquiries by the Office of Special Investigations, but were never deported.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries and Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Gregory Meek sent the letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, inquiring about nine Nazi war criminals who ultimately died in the U.S. after their convictions.
They were identified as: Osyp Firishcak, Bronislaw Hajda, Johann Leprich, Michael Negele, Jack Reimer, Theodore Szehinskyj, Anton Tittjung, Mykola Wasylyk and Vladas Zajanckauskas.
“Some of these men were stationed at Nazi concentration camps. Others participated in the horrific liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto. The Department of Justice established beyond a reasonable doubt that each of them contributed to the atrocities of the Holocaust,” the congressmen wrote. “A federal court stripped each of them of their citizenship and ordered them deported. But none of them were ever actually deported, and all nine of them died comfortably in the United States. Why?”
The lawmakers are asking that the State Department conduct a review of all nine cases and provide them with a “complete accounting of that profound injustice.”
In their letter, the congressman acknowledged that some countries may have been “unwilling to take custody” of the war criminals, but added that they are seeking a “clear picture” on what happened.