
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 18, 1991                   TAG: 9102180175
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MILWAUKEE                                LENGTH: Medium

THE DEPORTATION TRIALS OF TWO SUSPECTED NAZI

The deportation trials of two suspected Nazi concentration camp guards opened old wounds for Holocaust survivors and served as a poignant lesson for the children of Germans and Jews in this ethnic-minded city.

In 1989, federal prosecutors alleged that two suburban Milwaukee men, Anton Tittjung, 66, and Anton Baumann, 79, disguised their previous roles as concentration camp guards when they immigrated to the United States after World War II.

U.S. District Judge John Reynolds ruled Dec. 14 that Tittjung, a retired marble company worker, had been a guard at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria and stripped him of U.S. citizenship. The government plans to deport him but hasn't disclosed when.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Curran still must decide whether to revoke the citizenship of Baumann, a retired carpenter accused of being a guard at camps in Stutthof, Poland, and Buchenwald, Germany.

His two-day trial ended Jan. 4. Final submission of post-trial documents was set for Tuesday and a decision on deportation is expected before the end of the month.

The men, both Yugoslavian-born, had lived and worked in the Milwaukee area for years before being arrested. Immigration authorities have not disclosed how they were pinpointed.

Survivors of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany's systematic destruction of 6 million Jews before and during World War II, traveled from as far as Poland and France to testify about the harassment, torture and killing at the concentration camps, where most Jews were gassed.

The heavily publicized trials evoked painful memories but also may have helped to enrich relations between Jews and Germans by educating younger generations with little knowledge of the Holocaust, community leaders said.

"These trials have made history alive," said Mordecai Lee, executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council. "They have made World War II and the Holocaust immediate and personal rather than remote and abstract."

During both trials, Jews and friends and relatives of the two men sometimes sat awkwardly side by side in court.

In gripping testimony at Baumann's trial, Holocaust survivor Sam Israelski, who lives in New York City, recalled how he and several other prisoners were harassed while working to clear part of a forest outside the Stutthof camp.

by CNB