U.S. Seeks to Denaturalize Alleged Nazi
The Justice Department instituted denaturalization proceedings Wednesday against a Whitesboro, N.Y., man, alleging that he belonged to a World War II police unit in Nazi-occupied Latvia that murdered Jews.
The Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations, alleged that Mikelis Kirsteins concealed his wartime activity from U.S. immigration authorities when he entered the country in 1956.
Kirsteins, a native of Russia, served from July through December, 1941, in the Latvian Security Auxiliary Police, commonly known as Arajs Kommando, a notorious unit that murdered unarmed Jews and other civilians in Latvia, according to a Justice Department complaint.
Kirsteins personally assisted in persecution, making him ineligible to immigrate to the United States and requiring revocation of his citizenship, which he obtained in April, 1965, said the complaint filed in a New York court.
The former chief of the Kommando, Viktors Arajs, is serving a term of life imprisonment in West Germany after his conviction for mass murder.
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