Lansing, Mich. - Appeals Court Refuses Ex-Nazi Citizenship

Lansing, Mich. - An 86-year-old former Nazi guard's efforts to retain his U.S. citizenship were rebuffed by a federal appeals court. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati denied the appeal of Iwan Mandycz, a Sterling Heights, Mich., man who had contested a lower court's decision to strip his citizenship.
U.S. District Judge Paul Gadola ruled last year that Mandycz concealed his Nazi past and therefore was ineligible to immigrate to the United States in 1949. He could face deportation.

Now a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit agreed that Mandycz was an armed guard in 1943 at the Nazi labor camp Poniatowa in Poland, where Jews were exploited as slave laborers and then murdered, the court said. And that he lied about his background in applications for displaced person status and American citizenship after World War II. Mandycz, born in what is now Ukraine, became a U.S. citizen in 1955 and has lived in the Detroit area ever since.

His lawyers argued in court filings that Mandycz suffers from dementia and hasn't been able to help with the defense. They also said there wasn't enough evidence to prove he was a Nazi guard, certain evidence shouldn't have been permitted and that the government waited too long to file suit.