FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                         CRM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1997                        (202) 514-2008
                                               TDD (202) 514-1888

            JUDGE ORDERS DEPORTATION OF FORMER MEMBER
                   OF NAZI MOBILE KILLING UNIT


     WASHINGTON, D.C.  --  The Department of Justice today won an
order of deportation against Juozas Naujalis, a Chicago man who
served during World War II as an armed member of a Nazi-sponsored
mobile killing unit that murdered thousands of Jews and others in
German-occupied Byelorussia (now Belarus) and Lithuania.

     Eli M. Rosenbaum, Director of the Criminal Division's Office
of Special Investigations (OSI), noted that the Naujalis
decision, which was made available this morning by the U.S.
Immigration Court in Chicago, is a result of OSI's ongoing
investigation of Nazi persecutors residing illegally in the
United States.
  
     "This decision is an important victory," said Rosenbaum. "It
provides further proof that Hitler's henchmen can still be
brought to justice despite the many years that have passed since
the Third Reich's reign of terror was brought to an end by Allied
armed forces."

     Immigration Judge O. John Brahos found that Naujalis, 77, a
former machinist, assisted in the Nazi-sponsored persecution of
civilians while serving as a member of the infamous 2nd
Lithuanian Schutzmannschaft Battalion.  The court concluded that
members of the 2nd Battalion committed atrocities in Byelorussia,
killing thousands of civilians, predominantly Jews.  Naujalis
immigrated to this country from Germany in 1949; he never applied
for U.S. citizenship.

     The 2nd Battalion was a mobile killing group recruited in
Lithuania that perpetrated numerous mass shootings of Jewish men,
women and children, as well as Soviet POWs and suspected
communists and their families, in both Lithuania and Byelorussia. 
During the month of October 1941 alone, battalion members
participated in massacres that claimed the lives of over 10,000
innocent civilians in Byelorussia.

     During hearings in this case held in April and August of
this year, the Government proved that the Battalion was ordered
to Byelorussia from its base in Kaunas, Lithuania in October
1941.  Federal prosecutors introduced copious wartime
documentation as well as evidence from Jewish survivors and
former members of the Battalion.  The former Battalion members
recounted in chilling detail how their unit, along with German
personnel, surrounded villages, forcibly assembled the victims,
and then drove them en masse to wooded areas where they were
murdered by gunfire.  In 1962, Major Franz Lechthaler, the German
officer under whose command the battalion conducted the killing
operations in Byelorussia, was convicted in Germany on multiple
murder charges.  He has since died.

     Members of the 2nd Battalion assisted in rounding up doomed
Jews and others and bringing them to pits where they were to be
executed.  Judge Brahos termed these acts "atrocious."  The court
further ruled than Naujalis should not have been given a visa to
enter the United States in 1949 because of his voluntary service
in an organization under German command and because he served in
an organization that was hostile to the United States.

     OSI was created in 1979 to investigate and take legal action
against Axis persecutors living in the United States.  To date,
60 participants in Nazi-sponsored persecution have been stripped
of U.S. citizenship and 48 such persons have been removed from
this country.  Some 300 persons remain under investigation. 
Rosenbaum stated that his Office "will seek to have Juozas
Naujalis removed from this country as expeditiously as possible." 
In June, Judge James Moody of the U.S. District Court in Hammond,
Indiana revoked the U.S. citizenship of Kazys  iurinskas, an
Indiana man who had been a member of the same 2nd Lithuanian
Schutzmannschaft Battalion.
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