Last update - 00:00 21/09/2007
Former Nazi stripped of American citizenship, barred from U.S.
By DPA
Washington - A former Nazi concentration camp guard who concealed his role in the Holocaust has been stripped of his American citizenship and barred from the United States, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Romanian-born Martin Hartmann, 88, joined the Nazi SS Death's Head Guard Battalion at the Sachsenhausen camp near Berlin in July 1943 and served with the Nazis until World War II ended in May 1945.
He withheld his Nazi past when he immigrated to the U.S. in 1955 and when he later applied for U.S. citizenship, according to a complaint in federal court in Washington. Both times, had he disclosed his service with the Nazis, he would have been disqualified.
In a recent settlement with U.S. authorities, Hartmann acknowledged that he served as an armed SS guard of civilian prisoners and aided in Nazi persecution, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Hartmann left the United States for Germany before an August 31 deadline for his departure set by U.S. authorities, the department said.
"Martin Hartmann and other members of the SS Death's Head Guard Battalion were indispensable accomplices in the brutal crimes committed in the Nazi concentration camp system," said Eli Rosenbaum, head of the department's Office of Special Investigations, which tracks down former Nazis.
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