Former concentration camp guard stripped of US citizenship

13 May 2005

A judge in the US state of Milwaukee has stripped a Wisconsin man of his American citizenship. The judge concluded that Josias Kumpf, 80, served as a Nazi guard during World War II and that he "personally assisted" in the persecution of prisoners. Kumpf served as a guard at the Trawniki training camp in Nazi-occupied Poland and the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. In 2003, the US Justice department asked the court to revoke his citizenship. "In the present case, the government has demonstrated by clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence that defendant personally assisted in the persecution of prisoners..." In a 2003 interview, Kumpf said he had been taken from his home in Yugoslavia as a 17-year-old and forced to serve as a guard, but that he had not participated in any atrocities.