WASHINGTON – The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a March 2007 ruling by the U.S. District Court in Detroit revoking the U.S. citizenship of John (Ivan) Kalymon, 87, of Troy, Mich., because of his participation in violent acts of persecution while serving during World War II as an armed member of the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) in German-occupied L’viv, Ukraine, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division announced today.
During the period of Kalymon’s service in the UAP, from 1941 to 1944, German occupation authorities enacted persecutory anti-Jewish decrees that were enforced in L’viv by UAP members. The Court of Appeals, in a decision issued Sept. 4, 2008, affirmed the District Court’s finding that UAP men also participated in actions to reduce the population of the ghetto in which the Jews were forced to live, by searching for Jews in hiding, by shooting Jews who attempted to escape, and by rounding up and deporting Jews to Nazi forced labor camps or to the Belzec extermination center where they were murdered with poison gas.
Both court decisions cited captured UAP documents, which established that on multiple occasions Kalymon took part in mass round-ups of Jews and helped deliver some of them for deportation. The court decisions also noted that wartime UAP reports, including one signed by Kalymon himself, proved that in 1942 he personally killed and wounded Jews in L’viv by shooting them.
Kalymon immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1949 and became a U.S. citizen in 1955. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s finding that he was not eligible for citizenship because his persecutory actions on behalf of Nazi Germany rendered him legally ineligible to receive a visa to immigrate to the United States. The Sixth Circuit also affirmed the district court’s decision that Kalymon was ineligible to immigrate to the United States because he concealed his UAP service when applying for a visa.
"The Nazis and their collaborators killed more than 100,000 of L’viv’s Jews – men, women and children whose only ‘crime’ was their religion. John Kalymon was one of those collaborators, and this latest court decision is an important victory in the U.S. government’s ongoing effort to secure a measure of justice on behalf of the victims of Nazi inhumanity," said Office of Special Investigations (OSI) Director Eli M. Rosenbaum.
The case was investigated and prosecuted by OSI, which also litigated the appeal. The proceedings to denaturalize Kalymon were instituted in 2004 by OSI. The case is a result of OSI’s ongoing efforts to identify, investigate and take legal action against former participants in Nazi persecution who reside in the United States. Since OSI began operations in 1979, it has won cases against 107 individuals who assisted in Nazi persecution. In addition, more than 180 individuals who sought to enter the United States in recent years have been blocked from doing so as a result of OSI’s "Watchlist" program, which is enforced in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security.
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