The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Kalymon v. Holder recently upheld a decision against John Kalymon (petitioner) who was ordered deported because he assisted the Nazis in their persecution and murder of Jews. The court upheld the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissing an appeal of an immigration judge’s removal order. As the number of cases against accused Nazi perpetrators whom the government seeks to expel from the United States dwindles, this little-noticed ruling again underscores the ongoing importance and continuing vitality of the Holtzman Amendment (HA), the law under which his removal was mandated.1
The relevant circumstances occurred many years before the HA’s enactment. From October 1941 to at least March 1944, petitioner was an armed member of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) in Nazi-occupied L’viv, Poland. There, as part of their anti-Jewish persecution, the Nazis confined the Jews to a ghetto, compelled them to wear a Star of David armband and forcibly removed them from the ghetto, either for shooting or deporting them to the extermination camp Belzec. The UAP helped enforce the Nazis’ persecutory policies by, inter alia, rounding up Jews in the ghetto, escorting them to assembly points for deportation, guarding them to prevent escapes and liquidating the ghetto. Petitioner participated in carrying out many of these activities.
