Archive/File: people/t/tannenbaum.jacob/DOJ_Press_Release.870512
Last-Modified: 1998/12/31
Source: The United States Department of Justice


[Seal]                Department of Justice

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                       CRM
TUESDAY, MAY 12, 1987                       (202) 633-2010


The Department of Justice today filed a complaint seeking to strip
Jacob Tannenbaum of Brooklyn, New York, of his U.S. citizenship on the
grounds that when he sought naturalization more than 30 years ago he
concealed service during World War II as an overseer in a Nazi
concentration camp.

In the complaint, the Justice Department's Office of Special
Investigations (OSI) alleged that Tannenbaum, a native of Poland,
served from September 1944 through May 1945 as a supervisory "kapo" --
an inmate overseer of other prisoners -- at the Goerlitz concentration
camp. The camp was in what is now East Germany.

Persecution at Goerlitz included incarceration of civilians solely
because of their race or religion, use of prisoners as slave laborers,
and beating, starvation and execution  of prisoners, the complaint
said.

Tannenbaum entered the United States in December 1949 under the
Displaced Persons Act of 1948. He became a U.S. citizen in March 1955.

According to the complaint, the defendant's citizenship should be
revoked because he participated in the persectuion of prisoners at
Goerlitz who had been interned because of their race or religion.

[Transcription note: This case is of particular interest because Mr.
Tannenbaum is Jewish. knm, 1998/12/31]

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