Government: 79-year-old aided Nazis in killings

By Terry Frieden
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A 79-year-old Illinois man who became a U.S. citizen 48 years ago stands accused of helping Nazis systematically kill Jews in his native Lithuania in 1941. If convicted, he could be deported.

The Justice Department Monday initiated court proceedings in Chicago, Illinois, to revoke the citizenship of Peter John Bernes of Lockport, Illinois. Authorities in the department's Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations filed a complaint accusing Bernes -- then known as Petras Bernotavicius -- of serving as a deputy to Werner Loew, the Nazi-appointed leader of Kupiskis, Lithuania.

During his months in that post, the office contends, Bernes helped remove prisoners from jail so they could be taken to killing sites. The U.S. government says more than 1,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered by men under Loew's command in the summer of 1941.

"Bernes worked in an office near the overcrowded jail where victims were held without adequate food and beaten before being shot to death," according to a statement issued by the Office of Special Investigations.

"Although more than 1,000 Jews were living in Kupiskis when the Nazis arrived, not a single man, woman or child survived their murderous spree," said Eli Rosenbaum, director of the office.

Rosenbaum said about 190,000 Jews -- 94 percent of the Jewish population of Lithuania -- were killed by the Nazis and local collaborators.

Bernes immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1947. In 1954 he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in Chicago, but the complaint says his wartime activities make him ineligible for admission to the United States.

Bernes is one of about 200 elderly U.S. residents under investigation for supporting the Nazi campaign against Jews and other minority groups. The Office of Special Investigations, which was set up in 1979, has so far stripped 66 men of U.S. citizenship and deported 54 of them.