United States v. Kungys
Decision Date | 28 September 1983 |
Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 81-2305. |
Citation | 571 F. Supp. 1104 |
Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Juozas KUNGYS, Defendant. |
Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey |
W. Hunt Dumont, U.S. Atty., Newark, N.J. by Joseph F. Lynch, Jovi Tenev, Roger D. Einerson, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D.C., for plaintiff.
Williamson & Rehill by Donald J. Williamson, Newark, N.J., and Ivars Berzins, Babylon, N.Y., for defendant.
This is an action which the United States, acting through the Office of Special Investigations of the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice, instituted against defendant Juozas Kungys pursuant to Section 340(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, as amended, 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a), seeking to revoke defendant's citizenship. Jurisdiction is properly asserted under 28 U.S.C. § 1345, 8 U.S.C. § 1421(a) and 8 U.S.C. § 1451(a).
A summary of the government's charges upon which the complaint is based is as follows: During the first two months after the June 1941 German invasion of Lithuania (which the Soviet Union then occupied) defendant organized and led an armed group of civilians which actively assisted the Germans in the arrest and execution of persons who had been government and communist party leaders in the District of Kedainiai during the Soviet occupation. Defendant's armed group assisted the Germans in confining the 2500 Jews of the Kedainiai District in a ghetto and then assisted the Germans in bringing these Jewish citizens to a horse breeding farm. Defendant's armed group under defendant's personal direction joined with German soldiers of Einsatzkommando 3 in bringing the Jewish captives in groups of 200-300 from the farm to a huge pit where the German soldiers and defendant and his group shot and then buried their victims in earth and lime. Thereafter, according to the government's charges, defendant moved to Kaunas where he became manager of a German controlled industrial concern. In 1944 when the Soviet Armies overran the German forces in Lithuania defendant preceded the retreating German army into Germany where he resided until his immigration to the United States in 1948.
The government charges that in the course of applying for entry into the United States and for citizenship, defendant made the following false statements:
Defendant denies that he ever committed any crime and in particular that he participated in any way in the killing of the communist and government leaders and the Jewish population of Kedainiai. According to him in 1939 he commenced employment with the Kedainiai branch of the Lithuanian Bank and boarded at the home of the parents of the woman who later became his wife. In July 1941, before either of the mass killings which form the basis of the government's charges, he left Kedainiai to seek employment in Kaunas. From July until the fall he was employed in a print shop there; from the fall until Christmas he was a seminarian at the Telsiai Seminary; and after Christmas he returned to Kaunas and was employed first in the print shop and then in a small, family owned factory until the summer of 1944 when the Soviet forces again entered Lithuania. He claims to have participated in the work of the anti-German resistance while in Kaunas. He further claims that upon the approach of the Soviet Army he, his wife and members of her family fled as refugees to Germany eventually reaching what became a part of the French occupied zone.
Defendant admits that he gave false information during his immigration and naturalization proceedings concerning the date and place of his birth and concerning certain details of his employment during the period of the original Soviet occupation and the German occupation. He asserts that the false information was not material to any of the proceedings and insofar as the date and place of birth is concerned arose out of the necessity of obtaining a false identification card during the German occupation of Kaunas to avoid detection of his underground activities and to avoid mobilization into the German armed forces.
To support its most serious charges the government relies upon deposition testimony of Lithuanian witnesses taken in Vilnius with the cooperation of the Soviet authorities. Defendant contends that this testimony upon which the government relies to connect him to the killings in Kedainiai is false and is the product of a continuing effort of the Soviet Union to safeguard its hold upon the occupied Baltic states by discrediting emigres from those countries with fabricated charges that they committed war crimes during the period of the German occupation.
The case was tried without a jury. The evidence consists of the testimony of witnesses, deposition...
To continue reading
Request your trial-
U.S. v. Kowalchuk
...citizens' safety. Id. at 1401. Other courts have expressed hesitancy in crediting evidence from Soviet sources. In United States v. Kungys, 571 F.Supp. 1104 (D.N.J.1983), a case involving facts that are quite similar to those of this appeal, the court emphasized the Soviet's motivation for ......
-
Kungys v. United States
...material. Having rejected each of the three asserted grounds for denaturalization, the District Court entered judgment for Kungys. 571 F.Supp. 1104 (N.J.1983). The United States appealed. The Third Circuit declined to pass on the United States' submission that the first asserted ground (par......
-
U.S. v. Kungys
...court made numerous findings of fact and conclusions of law and entered judgment for the defendant on all counts. See United States v. Kungys, 571 F.Supp. 1104 (D.N.J.1983). The facts and background are detailed by the district court and will not be reiterated fully here, particularly since......
-
Kalejs v. I.N.S., 92-2198
...F.2d 1374 (7th Cir.1986). United States v. Kowalchuk, 571 F.Supp. 72 (E.D.Pa.1983), 773 F.2d 488 (3rd Cir. 1985). United States v. Kungys, 571 F.Supp. 1104 (N.D.N.J.1983), 793 F.2d 516 (3d I find myself in agreement with petitioner's analysis of these cases: Respondent reviews eleven United......