21 Facts About Johann Breyer

Johann Breyer was a Czech-American tool and die maker and onetime SS-Totenkopfverbande concentration and death camp guard whom the United States Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations unsuccessfully attempted to denaturalize and deport for his teenage service in the SS.

Johann Breyer's was considered the "most arcane and convoluted litigation in OSI history", owing to the convergence of three unusual legal factors in the case:.

Johann Breyer was arrested at his home in Philadelphia on June 17,2014, age 89, and held without bail pending an extradition hearing.

Katrina Johann Breyer was purported to have been born in 1895 in Manayunk, Philadelphia and to have moved with her family to Neuwalldorf while a teenager.

In 1942, at age 17, Johann Breyer volunteered to enlist in the Waffen SS, and was then placed with the SS's Death's Head Battalion, composed of volunteers from the overall SS.

Johann Breyer was assigned as a guard at Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

Johann Breyer acknowledged serving as an armed guard and escorting prisoners to their work sites and denied any personal role in or witnessing of any atrocities.

Soviet troops began to approach Auschwitz in January 1945; Johann Breyer was on home leave at the time and was re-routed to a forward fighting unit until taken prisoner by the Soviet Army in May 1945.

Johann Breyer emigrated to the United States in 1952 under the Displaced Persons Act.

Johann Breyer settled in Philadelphia where he raised three children with his wife and worked as a tool and die maker for an engineering company.

Johann Breyer asserted that he should be deemed to have entered the country lawfully as his mother had been born in the US and that the laws in place at the time that granted derivative citizenship only patrilineally were in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Johann Breyer therefore had to file an application for derivative citizenship with the INS.

The INS denied Johann Breyer's application based on the new statute and OSI therefore filed a deportation case.

Johann Breyer appealed the INS decision in district court on the grounds that the new statute was a bill of attainder in violation of Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution and unconstitutional under the equality clause as those inadmissible under the DPA were denied citizenship only if it was derived maternally.

Johann Breyer appealed both losses to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

The court noted that Johann Breyer voluntarily joined both the Waffen SS, which was a voluntary organization, and then the Death's Head Battalion, which was composed of volunteers from other SS units.

The court declined to hear evidence on whether Johann Breyer's mother had lost US citizenship due to her acquisition of Czechoslovakian citizenship, and potentially for taking other actions that could have resulted in renunciation, due to the late stage of the litigation.

On June 17,2013, the District Court of Weiden, Germany issued an arrest warrant for Johann Breyer for being an accessory to murder while a guard at Auschwitz.

Johann Breyer was arrested at his home in Philadelphia on June 17,2014.

On July 19,2014, Johann Breyer was granted bail and transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, on the grounds of his worsening health.

Johann Breyer died there three days later, just hours before his extradition to Germany was approved.