‘We are not talking about a big fish’ --Attorney Ronald Parker : Alleged Nazi’s Past Was Known for 30 Years, Lawyer Says

The Justice Department’s action to deport Bruno Karl Blach, a retired La Habra grocery clerk accused of being a Nazi guard at two concentration camps, came as a shock because Blach’s past has “not been a secret for 30 years,” his attorney said Wednesday.

Blach, 65, who allegedly worked as a guard and dog handler in German and Austrian concentration camps, is accused of lying about his military service in order to immigrate to the United States in 1956, according to a Justice Department order filed Monday.

Seeking Deportation

The government is seeking to deport Blach, a native of Czechoslovakia, for alleged Nazi activities between 1940 and 1945.

“We are not talking about a big fish,” Ronald Parker, Blach’s Fullerton attorney, said Wednesday. “He just happened to be serving in Germany at that time.”

Parker said the allegations against Blach “have really kind of torn him up” because “being in the Nazi Party has the same connotation as being a child abuser.”

On Tuesday, Blach said he had “done nothing wrong.”

Parker said he was unaware of any witnesses to Blach’s alleged Nazi involvement. But a government attorney said various witnesses supporting the government’s charges will be cross-examined at a future Immigration Court hearing in Los Angeles.

“Obviously somebody went to the (Justice Department’s) Office of Special Investigations with a complaint,” said Aaron Breitbart, a senior researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies in Los Angeles. “OSI doesn’t pick names out of the blue.”

Up to 10,000 Nazis

Breitbart said that between 3,000 and 10,000 Nazis immigrated to the United States after World War II, but “nobody knows exactly how many got in and presumably many of them have died.”

Government investigators interviewed Blach in 1981 and 1983.

But Neal Sher, director of the Office of Special Investigations, declined to say how Blach’s case came to light.

The government’s order contends that Blach joined the Nazi Party “on or about Jan. 13, 1939,” and that in 1940 he joined the Waffen-SS.

Blach, with the rank of a “corporal or private first class,” was assigned to the SS Totenkopf-Sturmbann (SS-Death’s Head Battalion) at Dachau concentration camp in Germany and remained there until approximately the summer or fall of 1943,” according to the order.

Blach guarded prisoners “who were sent outside the camp to do forced labor” and in April, 1945, “participated in the forced evacuation of prisoners from Wiener Neudorf concentration camp to Mauthausen concentration camp. (Blach was) armed during this period and handled one or more dogs,” the order states.

In 1951, Blach applied for admission to the United States under the Displaced Persons Act and claimed to have served in the “131st Infantry Regiment from 1940 to 1943” and the “8th Signal Unit from 1943 to 1945,” the order said.

On or about Sept. 21, 1951, the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps revealed Blach’s true military service and Blach was rejected for immigration to the United States, the order states.

But in 1956 Blach fraudulently gained admission to this country, the government contends.