WASHINGTON – A federal judge in Detroit has revoked the U.S. citizenship of John (Ivan) Kalymon of Troy, Mich., because he shot Jews in 1942 while serving in a Nazi-sponsored police unit that helped liquidate a Nazi-created Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Poland, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher for the Criminal Division announced today.
U.S. District Judge Marianne O. Battani found that Kalymon served in the 5th Commissariat (later designated the 7th) of the Nazi-operated Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) during World War II, in the city of L’viv. (That city, now in western Ukraine, was part of Poland until 1939.) The judge concluded that the 5th/7th Commissariat, along with other armed L’viv UAP units and other forces, rounded up Jews, shot Jews, prevented Jews from escaping, and transferred Jews to forced labor camps or killing sites for mass execution. Judge Battani further found, largely on the basis of captured wartime reports, that Kalymon shot Jews during these roundups. More than 100,000 Jews in L’viv were killed or displaced between 1942 and 1943 in part as a result of actions by the UAP in which Kalymon participated, according to Judge Battani.
Assistant Attorney General Fisher said, “The court’s ruling confirms that individuals who participated in genocide will not be permitted to retain the privilege of American citizenship.”
Kalymon entered the United States from Germany in 1949 and became a U.S. citizen in 1955. Judge Battani found that he was not eligible for citizenship because his service to Nazi Germany made him ineligible to immigrate to the U.S. She specifically found that he was ineligible to immigrate because Kalymon “assisted in the persecution of civil populations,” “advocated or acquiesced in activities or conduct contrary to civilization and human decency,” and lied about his UAP service when he applied for a visa to the U.S.
“Irrefutable evidence, including a handwritten report prepared by Kalymon in which he accounted to his superiors for ammunition he expended in shooting Jews, proved his participation in Nazi genocide. It has taken 62 long years, but history has at last caught up with John Kalymon,” said Office of Special Investigations (OSI) Director Eli M. Rosenbaum. OSI investigated the case and prosecuted it, in partnership with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan.
The case was tried in Detroit last fall by OSI senior trial attorneys Jeffrey L. Menkin, William H. Kenety V, and Todd Schneider. The proceedings to denaturalize Kalymon were instituted in 2004 by OSI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Michigan.
The Kalymon case is a result of OSI’s ongoing efforts to investigate and take legal action against former Nazi persecutors who reside in the United States. Since OSI began operations in 1979, it has won cases against 105 participants in Nazi crimes of persecution, stripping them of U.S. citizenship and/or removing them from this country. In addition, over 175 individuals implicated in wartime Axis crimes have been blocked from entering the United States in recent years as a result of OSI’s “Watch List” program, which is enforced in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security.
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