In re Chrambach

• Decision Date: 28 June 1972
• Docket Number: No. 47566.,47566.
• Parties: Petition for Naturalization of Andreas Carl CHRAMBACH.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maryland

346 F. Supp. 362

Petition for Naturalization of Andreas Carl CHRAMBACH.

No. 47566.

United States District Court, D. Maryland.

June 28, 1972.

David Carliner, Washington, D. C., and Elsbeth L. Bothe, Baltimore, Md., for petitioner.

FRANK A. KAUFMAN, District Judge.

Andreas Carl Chrambach, a citizen of Germany, has petitioned this Court for naturalization, pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1421.¹ The United States Naturalization Examiner has recommended to this Court that the petition be denied on the grounds that Chrambach is ineligible for citizenship under the provisions of section 315(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1426(a) which provides, in pertinent part:

(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 405(b) of this Act, any alien who applies or has applied for exemption or discharge from training or service in the Armed Forces or in the National Security Training Corps of the United States on the ground that he is an alien, and is or was relieved or discharged from such training or service on such ground, shall be permanently ineligible to become a citizen of the United States.

In an affidavit submitted in support of his petition for naturalization Chrambach has stated that he is the son of parents who were devout converts to Roman Catholicism from the Jewish faith. At the age of 10 his parents enrolled him in a Jesuit school in Berlin. Both his upbringing as a child by his family and his early formal education instilled in him, in his own words, "a personal faith which would give priority to the service of God over all other values and goals in life."

Because of their Jewish ancestry, petitioner and his family were classified as Jews under the Nazi government's race legislation. In 1937, Chrambach's father left home on a "business trip" and never returned. In 1939, petitioner, his brother, and his mother fled to Hungary to escape the Nazi tyranny. As in so many cases, their flight only delayed the terrible tragedy that befell those who were the object of Hitler's "final solution." Petitioner was imprisoned in Hungary and later sent to Auschwitz. He was liberated in 1945 and returned to Budapest to search for his family. While in that city he contacted the Jesuit Order with the intention of becoming a novice. Then, in late 1945, he learned that his mother was alive and in Germany and he returned there. His brother had not survived. From 1946 until 1948, petitioner attended law school at the University of Berlin. In 1949, he and his mother emigrated to the United States, being lawfully admitted into this country for permanent residence on April 20, 1949.

Petitioner's Selective Service file, which, under section 315(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1426(b), is "conclusive as to whether . . . he was relieved or discharged from such liability for training and service because he was an alien," discloses the following information:

After petitioner settled in Stockton, California, he registered on July 11, 1949 with the Selective Service as he was required by law to do, and shortly thereafter he was classified I-A (available for military service) by his local draft board. Petitioner's Selective Service records further show that on May 21, 1950 he wrote a letter to his local board stating: "I herewith apply to be relieved from the liability of military service, because I am a citizen of Germany, under Section 4(a) of the Selective Service Act 1948, on grounds of above application I herewith appeal my previous classification I-A . . . and ask you to be classified an alien not liable to military training or service." On July 24, 1950, petitioner executed, under oath, an "Application by Alien for Relief from Training and Service in the Armed Forces," SSS Form No. 130, which stated in part:

I hereby apply for relief from liability for training and service in the armed forces of the United States. I have read the NOTICE given below, and I understand that I will forever lose my right to become a citizen of the United States, and I may also be prohibited from entry into the United States or its territories or possessions as a result of filing this application.

The said "NOTICE," clearly printed at the bottom of the form, reads, in relevant part, as follows:

NOTICE

Section 4(a) of the Selective Service Act of 1948, provides in part that "Any citizen of a foreign country, who is not deferrable or exempt from training and service under the provisions of this title (other than this sub-section), shall be relieved from liability for training and service under this title if, prior to his induction into the armed forces, he has made application to be relieved from such liability in the manner prescribed by and in accordance with rules and regulations prescribed by the President; but any person who makes such application shall thereafter be debarred from becoming a citizen of the United States." (Emphasis supplied.)²

* * * * * *

After petitioner executed that application for exemption from military service, his local draft board, on August 9, 1950, changed his Selective Service classification from I-A to IV-C (Aliens).³

In 1951, by passage of section 4(a) of the Universal Military Training and Service Act,⁴ effective June 19 of that year, Congress amended the Selective Service Act of 1948 with regard to the exemption that had previously been available to all resident aliens, such as the petitioner, under the 1948 Act and regulations. However, for reasons that are not disclosed by the record in this case, at least with regard to the period between June 19, 1951 and May 20, 1953, petitioner's status with his draft board remained unchanged after the 1951 amendments to the Selective Service law and he retained his IV-C classification even though the exemption for aliens admitted for permanent residence no longer existed under the Selective Service law in effect after June 19, 1951.

The Selective Service regulations promulgated under the 1951 Act did continue to provide an exemption for a class of aliens, known as "treaty aliens,"⁵ who were "exempt from military service under the terms of a treaty or international agreement between the United States and the country of which the alien is a national."⁶ And it was pursuant to those regulations that on May 20, 1953, almost two years after the 1951 Act took effect, petitioner executed an "Application by Alien for Exemption from Military Service in the Armed Forces of the United States," Selective Service Form C-294. That application stated in part:

I hereby request exemption from military service in the Armed Forces of the United States; that as an alien I claim such exemption under and pursuant to the terms of a treaty existing by and between the country of which I am a citizen and the United States of America;

That I request exemption from such military service with full knowledge of the provisions of Section 315 of the Immigration and Nationality Act that any alien who applies or has applied for exemption from training or service in the Armed Forces of the United States on the ground that he is an alien, and is or was relieved from training or service on such ground, shall be permanently ineligible to become a citizen of the United States; further, that the records of the Selective Service System shall be conclusive as to whether an alien was relieved from such liability for training or service because he was an alien.⁷

After petitioner signed that statement his local board continued to classify him as IV-C until he was finally classified V-A (registrant over the age of liability for military service) on November 18, 1954.

Petitioner seeks to avoid the consequences — permanent ineligibility for citizenship — imposed by section 315 of the Immigration and Nationality Act on those who apply for and are granted relief from military service on the ground of alien status, by claiming first that his applications were based on his misunderstanding of the law. According to petitioner, when he received notification from his draft board that he had been classified I-A, he went to the law library at the county courthouse in Stockton, California and engaged in legal research to determine whether or not he was eligible for exemption from military service as a conscientious objector.⁸ On the basis of that research and conversations he had with several Catholic priests, petitioner reached the following conclusions: (1) that in order to be exempt as a conscientious objector one had to be a member of a traditionally pacifist church and that accordingly because he was a Roman Catholic he was not eligible for Selective Service conscientious objector classification; and (2) that those aliens who were granted exemption from Selective Service as conscientious objectors would not subsequently be able to become American citizens by naturalization.

Petitioner claims that those conclusions presented him with only two alternatives:

Either I registered as an objector with the consequence of being (a) not recognized as such and imprisoned for refusal to bear arms; and (b) not naturalized; or I did not register as an objector and had a chance to be naturalized if not called into military service. If I were called into military service I could refuse on grounds of alienage and would thus be also excluded from citizenship, but without going to prison as well. I choose this latter path, in particular since I dreaded nothing more than loss of personal freedom in imprisonment, having just 3 years earlier been miraculously emerged alive from imprisonment at Auschwitz, and having emigrated to America to start a new life away from the past horrors and not in order to go to jail for my beliefs. * * * I would have run to the end of the world rather than to be imprisoned again, and chose therefore the only emotionally possible path left to me.

Assuming as respondent agrees this Court should do, the sincerity and strength of petitioner's religious beliefs and in no way...