Justice Dept. board upholds deportation of accused Nazi

The deportation order for an accused Nazi from the Detroit area was upheld.

The U.S. Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals on Tuesday upheld a Detroit immigration judge’s Jan. 31 decision that John (Ivan) Kalymon, 90, should be removed from the United States due to his participation in lethal acts of Nazi-sponsored persecution of Jews during World War II.

Kalymon was ordered deported to Germany, Ukraine, Poland or any other country that will admit him.

Kalymon served voluntarily as an armed member of the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian Auxiliary Police in German-occupied Lvov, Ukraine. He is accused of shooting and killing Jews during his service, which he hid on his U.S. citizenship application.

In 2004, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Detroit seeking to revoke his U.S. citizenship, which he acquired in 1955 after emigrating from Germany six years earlier. A federal judge granted the request in 2007, finding that Kalymon had participated in the roundup and shooting of Jews during his time in the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police from 1941 to 1944.

“Ivan Kalymon was an integral part of the Nazi machinery of annihilation that ended the lives of more than 100,000 innocent men, women and children in Lvov,” said Eli Rosenbaum, director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy and Policy for the Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section.

The evidence against Kalymon included a seized Aug. 14, 1942 report, handwritten by Kalymon, in which he informed his Auxiliary Police superiors that he had personally shot to death one Jew and wounded another “during the Jewish operation” that day, according to the Justice Department. Other evidence included reports from Kalymon’s commander that Kalymon had fired his weapon during forcible roundups of Jews in which they were killed and wounded.