Deported by U.S., Accused Nazi Lands

An accused Nazi who lived in the U.S. for nearly 45 years before being deported arrived in Austria a free man, police said. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service picked up Ferdinand Hammer, 78, early Monday at his home in Sterling Heights, Mich., and deported him, attorney William Bufalino II said. In Austria, Hammer faces no charges, the Austria Press Agency said. Neither Simon Wiesenthal’s Jewish Documentation Center nor the Austrian Justice Ministry has any record of punishable offenses committed by him. Hammer became a naturalized American citizen in 1963 but was stripped of citizenship in May 1996 for concealing his membership in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS “Death’s Head Battalion” during World War II.