US seeks deportation of suspected Nazi war criminal

The US Justice Department has initiated deportation proceedings against a man found to have taken part in Nazi-sponsored killings and persecutions of Ukrainian Jews during World War II. In a statement, the Office for Special Investigations said it wants to expel the 88-year-old John (Iwan) Kalymon of Troy, Michigan, for "violent acts of persecution" against Jews while serving with the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) in Nazi-occupied Lviv, Ukraine.

A charging document filed last week in US Immigration Court in Detroit said that from May 1942 to March 1944, while a member of the Nazi-sponsored UAP, Kalymon "personally shot Jews ... killing at least one." He also allegedly took part in "operations in which Jews were forcibly deported to be murdered in gas chambers and to serve as slave laborers."

US Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said Kalymon's impending expulsion demonstrated Washington's resolve "to deny safe haven in this country to human rights violators, no matter how long ago they committed their heinous acts. The ultimate removal of John Kalymon will close a very painful chapter and provide a measure of justice to his victims and their families."

"With the active assistance of collaborators like John Kalymon, the Nazis annihilated some 100,000 innocent Jewish men, women and children in Lviv," said Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Criminal Division of the Office of Special Investigations.

Kalymon, a retired auto worker, denies the charges. However, he was stripped of his US citizenship in 2007 after a judge found that Kalymon‘s two years with the UAP resulted in the persecution of civilians. Earlier this year, the US deported another Ukrainian-born suspected Nazi war criminal, John (Ivan) Demjanjuk, to Germany, where he is now facing trial.