Believed Responsible for Thousands of Deaths : Panel Rules Suspected Nazi Should Be Deported

An immigration panel ruled Thursday that John Demjanjuk, a retired Cleveland auto maker believed to be a Nazi war criminal, should be deported from the United States.

The Board of Immigration Appeal dismissed Demjanjuk’s appeal of a May, 1984, decision by Administrative Law Judge Adolph Angelilli that Demjanjuk should be deported. The board also rejected his request for asylum and granted a request by the Immigration and Naturalization Service that Demjanjuk not be given the privilege of voluntary departure.

The board’s decision did not specify where Demjanjuk should be sent, but Angelilli had asked to be deported to the Soviet Union, his homeland. The INS has the final say about where he goes.

Demjanjuk may still appeal the board’s decision to federal court.

Neal Sher, chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, said: “We applaud this decision and we intend to pursue this matter as vigorously as possible.”

Demjanjuk, 64, is thought to be a Nazi death camp guard known as “Ivan the Terrible,” responsible for thousands of deaths at the Treblinka camp in Poland, where 900,000 Jews died during World War II. He allegedly helped to operate the gas chambers.

Demjanjuk denies the charges, and says he was a drafted Soviet soldier who was captured by the Nazis, and that he eventually served in an anti-communist unit attached to the German army. The board called Demjanjuk’s arguments “implausible.”

A native of the Ukraine, he lost his U.S. citizenship in a 1981 denaturalization trial in Cleveland when U.S. District Judge Frank Battisti ruled that he had concealed his past in the concentration camps when he sought entry to the United States in the 1950s.