Washington, DC – A former Nazi concentration camp guard lost a Supreme Court appeal over the government’s decision to revoke his U.S. citizenship.
Justices declined to review the case of John Hansl, a member of the SS Death’s Head battalion that guarded concentration camps at Sachsenhausen near Berlin in 1943 and Natzweiler in France in 1944.
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Hansl, who lives in Des Moines, Iowa, sought to distinguish his case from those of other former Nazi camp guards when he asked for a visa to enter the United States in the mid-1950s by arguing that he did not personally assist in persecution or hide his wartime past.
An appeals court, however, agreed with a lower court ruling that Hansl’s work as an armed guard with orders to shoot escaping prisoners was sufficient evidence that he “personally assisted in persecution.”
In one instance, Hansl helped search for an escaped prisoner who was later shot to death, although Hansl did not pull the trigger, court records show.
The Supreme Court’s action means that the government could begin proceedings to have Hansl deported.