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By Mae M. Cheng and Bryan Virasami
Staff Writers, Newsday, New York
December 27, 2002
Federal officials filed papers yesterday to strip a Douglaston man of his
U.S. citizenship, saying he served as a guard in a Nazi slave labor camp and
concealed his actions so he could enter this country.
Jaroslaw Bilaniuk, 79, is the second Queens man this year against whom the
Justice Department has begun citizenship revocation proceedings and who is
alleged to have been a guard at the Trawniki camp in Poland, where thousands
of Jews were incarcerated as forced laborers during World War II.
In May, federal officials filed similar court papers seeking to revoke the
American citizenship of Jakiw Palij of Jackson Heights. No trial date has
yet been set in Palij's case.
"We have some other people under investigation in the New York metro area,"
said Eli Rosenbaum, the director of the Justice Department's Office of
Special Investigations, which has been working on locating Nazis living in
the United States.
Rosenbaum would not comment on any possible ties between the two men or on
investigations into other Trawniki Nazi guards in the metropolitan area not
yet prosecuted. Rosenbaum explained that revoking Bilaniuk's citizenship
could ultimately lead to his expulsion from the United States.
The Ukrainian-born Bilaniuk started out at the Trawniki training camp in
1943, according to a complaint filed against him in federal court in
Brooklyn yesterday. At the camp, Nazi guards were trained for a program
code-named "Operation Reinhard," in which about 1.7 million Jews were
murdered, the complaint states.
"It can fairly be called a school for mass murderers," Rosenbaum said of the
training camp.
During his training, Bilaniuk is also alleged to have been a prison guard at
the nearby labor camp. After Trawniki, Bilaniuk was enlisted in a Nazi
company that participated in violent operations against Polish partisans and
later with another company that rounded up and guarded thousands of civilian
forced laborers, according to the complaint.
Bilaniuk came to the United States in July 1949 and received U.S.
citizenship in May 1957. For both his immigration and citizenship
applications, Bilaniuk hid his involvement with the Nazis, officials said.
Instead, Bilaniuk claimed to have worked in a shop in his Ukrainian hometown
of Piadyki and on a German farm during the years he allegedly was involved
with the Nazis.
"Bilaniuk and his fellow Trawniki men participated in the Nazis' infamous
genocidal scheme," Michael Chertoff, the assistant attorney general in
charge of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said in a prepared
statement. "Such persons have no right to U.S. residence or citizenship."
Bilaniuk could not be reached for comment.
His neighbors say he lives with his wife and one of his three sons in
Douglaston and mostly keeps to himself. They said Bilaniuk bought his
two-family home, a former military barrack, from the U.S. government.
Since the federal government began its special investigation in 1979, 71
people involved in Nazi war crimes have been stripped of U.S. citizenship
and 57 have been removed from the United States.
Newsday, New York, For Personal and Academic Use Only
http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/ny-nynazi273062683dec27,0,4401350.story?coll=ny%2Dnews%2Dprint
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