FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CRM

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1997 (202) 514-2008

TDD (202) 514-1888

JUDGE ORDERS DEPORTATION OF FORMER NAZI

DEATH CAMP GUARD

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Department of Justice yesterday

won an order of deportation against Johann Breyer, a
Philadelphia resident who served in the Nazi SS as a guard at two
notorious concentration camps during World War II.

Eli M. Rosenbaum, Director of the Criminal Division's Office of

Special Investigations (OSI), said that during the time Breyer
served as an armed SS guard at the infamous Auschwitz death
camp complex between May and September 1944, at least
500,000 innocent civilians were murdered, including some
100,000 children. Rosenbaum said that concentration and death
camp guards like Breyer were "an integral part of the Nazi
apparatus of mass persecution." The Breyer decision, he added, is
a result of OSI's ongoing investigation of Nazi persecutors
residing illegally in the United States.

At a hearing yesterday in U.S. Immigration Court in Philadelphia,

Immigration Judge Craig DeBernardis issued an oral decision that
Breyer, 72, a retired tool and dye maker, be deported to the
Republic of Slovakia, where he was born. The order of
deportation was based on Breyer's admitted service in the
SS-Totenkopf (SS Death's Head) guard detachments at the
Buchenwald Concentration Camp and the Auschwitz Death
Camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

In granting OSI's motion for an order of deportation, Judge

DeBernardis found that Breyer's wartime service as an armed SS
Death's Head guard at the Buchenwald and Auschwitz camps
constituted assistance in the Nazi program of persecution based
on race, religion, political opinion, and national origin. The
Judge's decision also found that Breyer's Waffen-SS service
constituted membership in a movement hostile to the United
States, which rendered him ineligible to immigrate to the United
States.

The decision was predicated on findings made in 1993 by U.S.

District Court Judge William H. Yohn, Jr., during the course of a
denaturalization suit brought by OSI. Judge Yohn's decision to
revoke Breyer's U.S. citizenship was affirmed by the Third
Circuit Court of Appeals in November 1994.

In a sworn interview with OSI attorneys in 1991, Breyer admitted

that he served as an armed guard of prisoners at

Buchenwald beginning in February 1943 and at Auschwitz

beginning in May 1944, with orders to shoot prisoners attempting
escape. Breyer also admitted that he guarded prisoners on slave
labor details at Auschwitz, that he was aware while guarding
Auschwitz that women and children were imprisoned there, and
that he saw smoke rising from the crematoria there where bodies
were being burned.

To date, 60 Nazi persecutors have been stripped of U.S.

citizenship as a result of OSI's investigations and prosecutions,
and 48 persons have been removed from the United States. Some
300 persons remain under investigation. Rosenbaum stated that
his Office "will seek to have Johann Breyer removed from this
country as expeditiously as possible."

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