Ex-guard said duty was forced

The man said the U.S. visa application did not ask him to reveal his service.
SHARON, Pa. (AP) -- A man facing deportation because he served as a guard at two Nazi concentration camps said he was forced to join the unit that guarded the camps or face death.
The U.S. Department of Justice wants to revoke the citizenship of Anton Geiser, 79, a retired Pennsylvania steel worker who was born in Croatia. The department said Geiser hid his service in the Waffen SS from U.S. officials when he immigrated in 1956.
The department said Geiser was an armed guard at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin from January to November 1943 before being transferred to the concentration camp at Buchenwald.
Tens of thousands of people were executed or died from starvation, disease and medical experiments at the camps.
His defense
But Geiser, who does not deny he was a guard at the camps, said the U.S. visa application did not ask him to reveal his service and that the law did not require him to volunteer information.
In papers filed Friday in federal court in Pittsburgh, Geiser also said he was drafted as a 17-year-old in German-occupied Yugoslavia in 1942 and that his service in the SS "was entirely involuntary and ... performed on pain of death."
Geiser said in the filing he "does not dispute the fact that rampant and outrageous atrocities were committed at Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald concentration camps," but that he "has no culpability for those crimes."
Geiser, who emigrated to the United States from Austria and became a U.S. citizen in 1962, has not been charged with a war crime.
If deported, Geiser would lose his citizenship and Social Security benefits and would be deported to either his native Croatia or Austria.
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