SOUTHLAND : Retired La Habra Grocery Clerk Arraigned as WWII Nazi Killer
A retired La Habra grocery clerk was arraigned in U.S. District Court this morning after his arrest Tuesday on West German government charges that he murdered concentration camp prisoners during World War II.
Bruno Karl Blach, 69, had been ordered deported to West Germany by a federal immigration judge in April, 1987, after an emotional court hearing. Blach had been appealing the deportation order and his attorney, Ronald G. Parker, today termed the arrest and criminal charges a “back-door extradition.”
Blach, a native of Czechoslovakia, joined the Nazi Party in 1939 and served as a guard and a dog handler at the Dachau and Weiner-Neudorf concentration camps, according to federal authorities. At his hearing, an eyewitness identified him as a Nazi guard who machine-gunned to death an elderly Jewish man during a march between two concentration camps.
Blach gained admission into the United States in 1956 by lying to immigration officials about his past, federal authorities say.
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