United States v. Kairys

Citation600 F. Supp. 1254
Decision Date28 December 1984
Docket NumberNo. 80 C 4302.,80 C 4302.
PartiesUNITED STATES of America v. Liudas KAIRYS, Defendant.
CourtU.S. District Court — Northern District of Illinois

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Norman Moscowitz, Michael Wolf, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., for plaintiff.

Fred H. Bartlit, Jr., David E. Springer, Kirkland & Ellis, Chicago, Ill., for defendant.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

MORAN, District Judge.

The government here seeks the denaturalization of Liudas Kairys, pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a), on the grounds that he secured his immigration and citizenship by misrepresentation and concealment of material facts and because the facts concealed legally barred him from entering the United States at the time of his immigration. The central factual issue in this case is whether the defendant is the person the government contends he is. It is not disputed that in the determination of that factual issue all inferences in the evidence must be drawn as far as reasonably possible in favor of the citizen; and that with those inferences drawn favorably to the accused the government must prove each element of its case by clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence, with the government's proof not leaving the issue in doubt on any element of the case.

Defendant is not charged with war crimes. What is under attack is his status as a citizen. The basis for that attack is his alleged status some forty years ago, as a guard at the Treblinka labor camp. While the government contends that defendant was personally involved, on one or perhaps more occasions, in atrocities, its proof of that, as later more fully discussed, is insubstantial. What an individual guard by the name of Kairys may or may not have done at that camp is now lost in the mists of time.

It is perhaps helpful to begin by discussing the larger context in which this case arose. That context is historical, with much of it stipulated to by the parties.

In modern times Lithuania has existed as an independent national state only during the period between the World Wars. The district of Vilnius, the historical site of the Lithuanian capital, was originally under Lithuanian sovereignty when it became independent. However, in 1920, it was invaded by Poland and placed under Polish sovereignty. The period between the wars was marked by difficult relations between Poland and Lithuania, in large measure because of the Polish control of Vilnius. Germany, for reasons of its own, gave comfort to Lithuania during that period in its aspirations for a recovery of Vilnius.

In September 1939, following the German-Soviet nonaggression pact, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded and partitioned Poland. The Soviet Union thereafter occupied the eastern portions of Poland, including the Vilnius district. A month later, in October, it returned the City of Vilnius to Lithuanian sovereignty. In June 1940 the Soviet Union invaded and occupied the Baltic states and Lithuania ceased to exist as an independent nation. A year later, on June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and Lithuania was rapidly overrun. During the remainder of the war the Germans employed Baltic nationals in paramilitary formations and in other capacities. Their status was not that of Germans but, although subordinate, it was considerably better than that of Poles, Russians, and Jews. The Balts occupied a rung on the Nazi "hierarchical principle of racism," which exploited "the antisemitic assertion of the existence of a `worst' people in order properly to organize the `best' and all the conquered and oppressed in between ... so that each people, with the necessary exception of the Jews, could look down upon one that was even worse off than itself." Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), p. 241.

In 1942 the Germans initiated "Aktion Reinhard," which was a plan for the systematic total extermination of all Jews in Europe. The German Schutzstaffel ("SS") was in large part responsible for carrying out this plan. One method for carrying out its plans, vis-a-vis Europe's Jews, was Nazi Germany's operation of numerous concentration camps, extermination camps and forced labor camps. The SS was responsible for the operation of these camps.

Although defendant did not so stipulate, it is beyond dispute that the SS recruited numerous Soviet prisoners who were to act as guards. Prisoners deemed politically reliable, such as various Baltic and Ukrainian prisoners, were inducted into guard units known as the SS Wachmannschaft. Many members of those units received training as camp guards at the Trawniki training camp in Poland. Some of the guard units served in the SS Commando Lublin in Poland. That unit had several functions over time, including guarding the Warsaw and Lublin Jewish ghettoes, guarding concentration camps and labor and extermination camps in and around Lublin, and participating in rounding up Jews in the Polish ghettoes and in their subsequent transportation. That guard service included service at the Treblinka labor camp.

The Treblinka labor camp was originally erected in late 1941 or early 1942 as a penal camp for Poles who committed various infractions of Nazi law. After the institution of Aktion Reinhard in 1942 the Germans erected the Treblinka extermination camp a few kilometers from the labor camp. Jews and others from Poland and elsewhere were thereafter sent to Treblinka (in addition to other similar camps) by the tens of thousands. Jewish prisoners sent to Treblinka were selected immediately for either death by gassing at the extermination camp or, if healthy, for forced labor in the labor camp or extermination camp. Approximately 900,000 Jews were murdered at the Treblinka extermination camp during the period of its existence.

The Treblinka labor camp was under the administration of German SS officers. Food rations for prisoners at the labor camp were inadequate and medical care for prisoners was virtually non-existent. Much of the labor performed by prisoners was exceedingly strenuous, including loading coal at a railroad station, breaking up and transporting stones from a quarry, chopping wood, paving and repairing roads, and loading sand from the banks of a nearby river. Prisoners at the labor camp were forced to work year-round, regardless of the weather. They worked six days a week from early morning until evening. As a result of these conditions the death of prisoners by disease or exhaustion was a weekly, and sometimes a daily, occurrence. Prisoners who became too weak to continue working were killed by members of the guard unit and the German SS. In addition to those deaths, prisoners of the Treblinka labor camp were shot, hanged, beaten or stabbed to death with and without apparent reason by the German SS and the camp's guards. During the course of its operation several thousand Jewish prisoners died at the labor camp. As they died or were killed, they were replaced by new prisoners. The total number of prisoners generally varied between 500 and several thousand, including men, women and adolescents.

While the camp was not a death camp as such, unlike the nearby Treblinka extermination camp, it was anticipated that the prisoners at the Treblinka labor camp would, in due course, die from disease, malnutrition or overwork. As a matter of policy prisoners who could no longer work were—in the evening upon returning from work details—left between the fences on the perimeters of the camp for the purpose of being killed before the following day.

Besides the German SS officers, there were four platoons of non-German SS Wachmaenner, each platoon comprising between 10 and 25 guards. The guards were armed. Only Germans were generally authorized to enter the prisoner compound. The guards resided on the premises nearby and acted generally as perimeter and work detail guards.

The extermination camp was closed in the fall of 1943. In July 1944, as the Soviet army approached the vicinity of Treblinka, the labor camp was abandoned and burned. Over 300 Jewish prisoners were shot at that time, with only 10 to 15 survivors. Members of the guard unit participated in that massacre.

After evacuating Treblinka, the guards retreated westward into Germany. In February 1945 they were in Dresden, where they participated in the search for survivors, the burial of the dead and the clearing of the rubble following the firebombing of the city. From there, as the war came to a close, the unit moved into Czechoslovakia, where it was at the war's end.

The government contends the defendant was born Liudvikas Kairys on December 24, 1920, in the Village of Svilionys, Svencionys County, in eastern Lithuania. That area is in the Vilnius district, then under Polish sovereignty. His father's name was Petro and his mother's maiden name was Maria Meskelyte. Sometime prior to March 1940 defendant moved to Vilnius. In the spring of 1940 a Liudvikas Kairys, son of Petro, born December 24, 1920 in Svilionys Village, and residing in Vilnius, was granted Lithuanian citizenship. A Lyudvik Kayrov, son of Petr and Mariya, nee Meshkel, born December 24, 1920, had previously been baptized in the Village of Svilyany in 1921. The personal data underlying that application for citizenship specifies that Kairys completed a four-grade grammar school in the Village of Svilionys.

According to the government, defendant shortly thereafter entered service in the Lithuanian military. When the Soviet Union invaded and occupied all of Lithuania it absorbed the Lithuanian military into the Red Army. Defendant remained with his military unit and, within a few days after the invasion, he was captured. At some later time he was taken to the German prisoner-of-war camp in Hammerstein, Pomerania.

Defendant does not seriously dispute that a Liudvikas Kairys, son of Petro, born December 24, 1920 in Svilionys, lived on his parents' farm and thereafter moved to Vilnius where he was granted Lithuanian citizenship on May 4, 1940. The...

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