Disorders Mar Hearing for Accused Nazi Guard

A deportation hearing for a La Habra grocery clerk accused of being a Nazi guard at two concentration camps erupted into violence outside the courtroom Monday when a Jewish observer lunged at him, screaming, “How many Jews did you kill?”

Bruno Karl Blach, 66, is accused of lying about his service with the SS Death’s Head Battalion at the Dachau and Wiener-Neudorf camps when he emigrated to the United States in 1956.

He was silent Monday as government attorneys announced they would produce testimony from a former Wiener-Neudorf inmate and an alleged former SS colleague documenting Blach’s service with the largest branch of Adolf Hitler’s elite protection squads.

Later, a courtroom observer who had been silent during the proceedings grabbed at Blach in the hallway, screaming: “Did you kill my father? Did you kill my mother?” The man, who fellow observers identified only as an immigrant from Budapest named “Andy,” threw a camera at photographers before being subdued.

“All the survivors, they build their lives all over again,” explained Harry Kagan, one of several Jews who came “just to watch” the proceedings. “They left, they live, they dance, they laugh--but beneath all that is a bloody undercurrent,” he said. “What you see today--it burst out.”

Blach’s attorney, Ronald Parker, said government attorneys did not produce any evidence that Blach was involved in the atrocities detailed during the first day of testimony. “So far, it’s been sort of a statement on the Third Reich, which is terrible,” Parker said. “We can’t try World War II here.”