Pittsburgh, PA – Deportation Likely for Ex-Nazi After Supreme Court Declined Appeal

Pittsburgh, PA – A Mercer County man who served as a Nazi guard in World War II faces possible deportation after the U.S. Supreme Court this week declined to hear his appeal.

The Justice Department now can petition an immigration judge to have Anton Geiser, 84, of Sharon removed from the United States — a process complicated because Geiser’s native country, Yugoslavia, no longer exists. His former hometown now is in Croatia.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to deny Mr. Geiser’s request effectively ends the denaturalization process against him,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney.

Geiser, drafted into the German army in September 1942, was trained in the Waffen SS to be a prison guard. He was stationed at Sachsenhausen and Arolsen, a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Geiser said in court records that he never killed or harmed anyone.

Geiser came to the United State in 1956 and became a citizen in 1962.

U.S. District Judge David S. Cercone in September 2006 revoked Geiser’s citizenship through a civil process brought by the government. He was not convicted of any crime.

Irene Szulman, 80, of Shadyside spent four years imprisoned in a ghetto in Poland and later in concentration camps. She doesn’t know if deporting Geiser now will do any good but said she is grateful for the government’s efforts.

“They should make their lives as miserable as possible because they deserve it,” Szulman said. “But as far as deporting him, what are they going to do with this old bag of bones?”

Moshe Baran of Squirrel Hill also had little compassion for Geiser’s plight.
“He can’t complain. He had a good life until he got caught,” said Baran, 88, who lived in a ghetto in Horodok, Poland, now part of Belarus, before escaping from a Nazi labor camp in 1943 and joining Russian liberation forces. “I can’t feel any sympathy for those who were part of this murder machine.”