Word: fedorenko
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Ukrainian-born Feodor Fedorenko, 73, has spent most of his 31 years in the U.S. as a Connecticut foundry worker. He has paid taxes and minded his own business, and in 1970 he became a citizen. Then, in 1978, he found himself in a courtroom in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., listening to a string of witnesses swear that during World War II he had whipped and shot Jews at the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. The former guard was not on trial for war crimes, but for concealing his Treblinka experience when applying for citizenship. If the Government won, he probably...
Last week Fedorenko's case was before the Supreme Court, and the outcome will determine much more than where an aging widower lives out his final years. The law says that citizenship can be revoked if the immigrant concealed a "material fact" when he applied for it. This provision has become the linchpin of the Justice Department's three-year effort to deport suspected war criminals believed to be in this country...
...Government maintains that a fact is material if its revelation would have triggered an inquiry that "might" have turned up facts barring citizenship-participation in atrocities, for example. That is not enough, insists Fedorenko's lawyer, Brian Gildea of New Haven, Conn. The Government has to show that such an investigation definitely "would" have led to the discovery of damning facts. Says Allan Ryan, head of the Justice Department's special unit for tracking down former war criminals: "That's no different from saying we have to prove the atrocities from scratch right in the courtroom...