Nazi guard's citizenship revocation upheld

PITTSBURGH, June 11 (UPI) -- A federal appeals court upheld a lower-court decision to revoke the U.S. citizenship of a Pittsburgh-area man who was a Nazi concentration camp guard.

A U.S. District Court revoked the citizenship of Anton Geiser of Sharon, Pa., because he was a guard at Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald concentration camps, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday in a news release.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the lower court's ruling he was not eligible for citizenship because his Nazi service made him ineligible to immigrate to the United States.

Geiser, 81, admitted under oath his duties included escorting prisoners to slave labor sites and he had standing orders to shoot prisoners trying to escape, the department said.

He immigrated to the United States from Austria in 1956 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1962.

"By serving as an armed SS guard at two different Nazi concentration camps, Anton Geiser directly assisted in the persecution of thousands of prisoners held under brutal conditions they could not escape," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division. "The appellate court's agreement ... to strip Mr. Geiser of his U.S. citizenship proves that passage of time does not make these crimes any more acceptable."