By, Jessica Elgot
1 min read
ByJessica Elgot, Jessica Elgot
A retired engineer, who served in a Nazi police force, has appeared in court in the first step in an attempt to deport him from the US.
John Kalymon, 88, appeared at an immigration court in Detroit, Michigan. He denies personally shooting Jews, killing at least one, as a member of the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian Auxiliary Police.
He also denies rounding up hundreds of Ukrainian Jews so they could be deported to gas chambers or labour camps, but admits that he was a member of the UAP.
His lawyer, Elias Xenos, argued that Mr Kalymon’s branch of the force had no authority. He said they were mainly used to guard streets and police cells.
Mr Kalymon fled to Germany in 1944. He concealed his UAP past when he immigrated to the US in 1949 but was stripped of his US citizenship in 2007.
The UAP assisted Nazi forces with confining more than 100,000 Jews to a ghetto in the city of Lviv, then in Ukraine. Most were killed in gas chambers, though some were shot or died in forced labour camps.
Judge Elizabeth Hacker ordered the US Justice Department to file a case brief by January 2010.
The court was adjourned until February to give Mr Kalymon’s lawyer time to respond to the brief. A trial date has not been set.