FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CRM

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1995 (202) 514-2007

TDD (202) 514-1888

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT INITIATES DEPORTATION PROCEEDINGS

AGAINST FORMER MEMBER OF NAZI MOBILE KILLING UNIT

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The Department of Justice announced today

that it has initiated deportation proceedings in Chicago against
a Cicero, Illinois man accused of participation in Nazi-sponsored
acts of persecution while serving in the infamous 12th Lithuanian
Schutzmannschaft (Protective Detachment) Battalion during World
War II.
The order to show cause, filed today in U.S. Immigration
Court in Chicago by the Criminal Division's Office of Special
Investigations (OSI) and the Chicago District Office of the
Immigration and Naturalization Service, alleges that Juozas (Joe)
Naujalis, 74, was a member of the 12th Battalion from August 1941
to November 1943, and that, while serving in the battalion, he
participated in Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution. The order
also charges that Naujalis gave false testimony and willfully
concealed his wartime service on behalf of the Nazis when
applying to immigrate to the United States in 1949.
The 12th Battalion was armed, sponsored and controlled by
Nazi Germany. During 1941 and
1942, it shot to death thousands of unarmed Jews and other
civilians in Lithuania and Byelorussia (now Belarus) because of
their race, religion, political beliefs, or national origin.
Major Franz Lechthaler, under whose command the battalion
conducted the mass killing operation in Belarus, was convicted in
West Germany on multiple murder charges in 1962 and has since
died.
The order specifically states that in September 1941,
Naujalis participated in a "murderous sweep" through three towns
near Kaunas, Lithuania, that resulted in the deaths of "1,522
Jewish men, women and children." It also alleges that during the
fall of 1941, the 12th Battalion conducted killing actions in
Minsk and surrounding areas of Byelorussia that resulted "in the
brutal massacres of more than 19,000 Byelorussian Jews and other
civilians--including children and the elderly--and an unknown
number of Allied prisoners of war."
A captured German document placed in evidence at the postwar
Nuremberg trials shows a shocked Nazi administrator complaining
about the "indescribable brutality" with which the battalion
carried out one of these operations, the execution by gunfire of
at least 3,000 Jews near Slutsk, Belarus, in October 27-28, 1941.
The order alleges that Naujalis, a retired machinist, procured
his immigration visa illegally and by concealing and
misrepresenting his wartime activities.
OSI Director Eli M. Rosenbaum said that Naujalis' unit "left
an almost unimaginably horrific trail of death and destruction,
sparing neither infant nor invalid." He noted that the
initiation of proceedings to deport Naujalis is a result of OSI's
ongoing efforts to identify and take legal action against former
participants in Nazi persecution residing in this country. Since
OSI began operations in 1979, 52 Nazi persecutors have been
stripped of U.S. citizenship and 44 persons have been removed
from the United States . More than 300 persons remain under
investigation, Rosenbaum said.
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