SS-Rottenführer
* 1919
letzter bekannter Wohnsitz: La Habra (Kalifornien)
Sudetendeutscher
ab 00.01.1939
Mitglied der NSDAP
1940 - 1943
(SS-Totenkopfdivision) Wachmann und Hundeführer im KL Dachau
1943 - 1945
Wachmann und Hundeführer im KL Wiener-Neudorf
1951
Versuch der Einreise in die USA, aber Einreise verweigert
1956
Auswanderung in die Vereinigten Staaten
(Mitarbeiter in einem Supermarkt in Los Angeles (La Habra), Kalifornien)
1990
an Deutschland ausgeliefert
1993
vom Landgericht Duisburg aus Mangel an Beweisen freigesprochen (LG Duisburg 930325)
5. November 1986 07.29 Uhr ET
LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Ein Richter hat sechs Monate Zeit, um zu entscheiden, ob ein pensionierter Angestellter der Supermarkt liegt auf seinem Visumantrag über seine Tätigkeit als SS-KZ-Aufseher während des Zweiten Weltkriegs vorgeworfen deportieren.
Eine Abschiebung Anhörung endete Dienstag für Bruno Blach, 66, von La Habra, der sagte,'' Ich habe nichts zu leugnen. ... Ich werde nie abgeschoben werden.'' US Immigration Judge James Vandello ist, eine Entscheidung bis zum 1. Mai zu machen.
Ein westdeutscher ergab, dass Blach, als SS-Unteroffizier, erschlug 36 Insassen des Wiener-Neudorf Konzentrationslager, weil sie zu schwach, um zu evakuieren, bevor der Befreiung des Lagers durch amerikanische Truppen im Jahr 1945 waren.
Camp Überlebenden behaupten Blach Schuss Gefangenen während des 12-Tage-Marsch zu einem anderen Konzentrationslager.
Blach ist der auf seinem Visumantrag über seinen Dienst in der Nazi-SS-Sicherheitsdienst bei der Anwendung in die Vereinigten Staaten im Jahr 1956 einwandern vorgeworfen. Das Justizministerium will Blach zu Czechoslavakia deportieren.
Blach hat zugegeben, das als ein SS-Mann an Konzentrationslager, bestreitet aber, dass er bei der Verfolgung von Gefangenen beteiligt.
'' Er ein vorbildliches Leben in den Vereinigten Staaten gelebt hat'', sagte sein Anwalt, Ronald Parker. '' Er hat nie seinen Namen geändert oder versucht, heimlich leben in den Vereinigten Staaten.''
Bialas Alexsy
Alexsy Bialas, ein Überlebender des Todeslagers, sagte aus, er habe gesehen, wie Blach auf dem Marsch der Gefangenen von Wiener-Niedorf nach Mauthausen einen älteren polnischen Juden in einen Graben geworfen und ihn persönlich mit seiner Maschinenpistole erschossen hatte, nachdem der Mann gestolpert war.
LOS ANGELES, 1986 Nov. 4
Winding up a week-long deportation hearing, Government attorneys today asked a judge to deport a 66-year-old grocery clerk who served as a Nazi concentration camp guard in World War II and who is accused of killing at least one elderly Jew.
The grocery clerk, Bruno Karl Blach, emigrated to the United States in 1956 and settled in La Habra, a suburb of Los Angeles. He is accused of lying by not mentioning on his visa application that he had been a Nazi SS, or elite guard, at the Dachau and Wiener-Neudorf concentration camps when he emigrated.
Mr. Blach did not take the stand and his attorney, Ronald G. Parker, did not present any witnesses. Mr. Parker contended that the Government did not prove its case.
'Facts Compel Deportation'
Bruce J. Einhorn, the senior Federal attorney in the case, told the judge in his summation, ''Even if the court took cognizance only of Blach's role as an SS guard and of the general duties of an SS guard, those facts alone would compel his deportation.''
Mr. Parker conceded in court that his client did serve in the SS as a concentration camp guard, but he denied Mr. Blach committed any atrocities. ''We're not saying that the events didn't happen, but we categorically deny that he was involved.''
After both sides gave summations, Judge James P. Vandello of Federal Immigration Court said he would decide by May 1 if Mr. Balch should be deported. Appeals in the case could take several years, attorneys said today.
Mr. Einhorn called 10 witnesses and introduced more than 100 exhibits, including Mr. Blach's SS personnel file and other documents now in the West German archives. There are no criminal charges pending against Mr. Blach in West Germany, but the prosecutors there and the police were present when witness gave depositions to the Federal attorneys in West Germany, according to court records.
One of the major witnesses at the hearing was Charles W. Sydnor Jr. president of Emory and Henry College in Emory, Va., who is an American historian and specialist in Nazi history. Mr. Sydnor testified that according to official German concentration camp records, Mr. Blach ''stomped'' two sick and feeble Yugoslav prisoners before they were shot to death. The official record was placed in evidence. Witness Reports a Killing
Another key witness, Alexsy Bialas, a survivor of the Wiener-Neudorf camp, identified Mr. Blach as the guard who killed an elderly feeble man in a forced walk at Wiener-Neudorf in the spring of 1945.
Mr. Bialas, a retired engineer now living in Canada, cried as he testified that Mr. Blach pulled the old man out of a line, hurled him into a ditch and then shot him to death with a machine-gun.
''I can't ever forget,'' he said of the event that occurred more than four decades ago. ''The old chap was looking at me when he died. He was moving his lips.''
In cross-examination, Mr. Parker asked Mr. Bialas if he were certain, after all this time, that Mr. Blach was indeed the Nazi guard who shot the man to death.
''Yes, I am sure, sir,'' Mr. Bialas replied. ''I can see his face.''
Mr. Bialas did not identify Mr. Blach in the courtroom. Mr. Bialas had picked out his photograph from a group of old visa photographs. Mr. Bialas first identified Mr. Blach in 1983 when Canadian and American officials interviewed him about his concentration camp experiences.
According to Justice Department documents filed in court, Mr. Blach joined the Nazi Party in 1939, became a member of the SS in 1940 and served from 1940 to 1943 in Dachau, Germany, and from 1943 to 1945 in Wiener-Neudorf, Austria.
In the mid-1970's, West German officials in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia conducted an investigation into allegations that Mr. Blach had participated in the murders of concentration camp prisoners.
However, the authorities dropped the investigation when they discovered Mr. Blach was not in West Germany, according to court documents. At the time, he was living in La Habra, court documents show.
According to the Justice Department's nine-page complaint, Mr. Blach attempted to enter the United States in 1951 but was turned down because an investigation showed that he had lied on his visa application for admission. The investigation determined he had served as an SS guard, which he had not mentioned.
Five years later Mr. Blach again applied for entry to the United States, but this time the authorities at the American Embassy in Vienna approved his visa. It was later discovered that the officials had not been given Mr. Blach's complete file detailing his SS activities, which would have precluded his entering the United States, according to court testimony.
In several previous cases, courts have held that SS concentration camp guards are not entitled to enter the United States by virtue of their SS affiliation.
LOS ANGELES, 1990 Jan. 23
A Federal judge today ordered the extradition of a retired grocery clerk to West Germany to face charges that he killed three prisoners while serving as a Nazi concentration camp guard in World War II.
The Justice Department said the action against the man, Bruno Karl Blach, was only the fourth time the United States had extradited a person accused of Nazi war crimes.
The director of the department's Office of Special Investigations, Neal M. Sher, said his office had tracked Mr. Blach through documents over the last six or seven years while he lived a quiet life in La Habra, Calif. ''This is what Nazi hunting is all about in the United States,'' Mr. Sher said.
At a brief appearance today before the United States Magistrate, Ralph Gessen, the white-haired Mr. Blach, 69 years old, waived his right to an extradition hearing. The judge ordered him to be turned over immediately to the West German authorities at Los Angeles International Airport.
'Tired of Fighting This'
''He was tired of fighting this,'' said Mr. Blach's lawyer, Ron Parker. ''It's a cloud that would not go away. He will go back to Germany to see if they have anything or not.''
Mr. Blach, who had lived in the United States as a legal resident since 1956 but never became a citizen, is accused of killing three prisoners in a 200-kilometer forced march in April 1945 from the Wiener Neudorf concentration camp to the Mauthausen camp.
One of these prisoners, an elderly and disabled Polish Jew, was shot when he was too weak to keep up in the forced march, said Murray Stein, the senior counsel for the Justice Department in the case.
In April 1987 a United States Immigration Court ordered Mr. Blach's deportation after determining that he had served as an SS guard and dog handler at the Nazi concentration camps of Dachau and Wiener Neudorf from 1940 to 1945. Mr. Blach was appealing the order.
He has in the past admitted through his lawyer to being a camp guard and being present at the march, but has denied the accusations of killings.
He did not speak to reporters today but in 1985 he told The Los Angeles Times that he had been forced to follow orders. ''When you are drafted, what do you do?'' he said. ''I didn't have any choice. I had to do what they told me.''
Request for Extradition
Last June a West German court issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Blach charging him with three killings. West Germany requested his extradition under its 1978 extradition treaty with the United States.
Mr. Blach was arrested and has been held without bail since last October.
Previously the United States officials investigating Nazi war crimes have extradited one person to West Germany, one to Yugoslavia and one to Israel.
In 1973 Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan of Queens, NY, was extradited to West Germany. She was sentenced in 1989 and is still serving a life sentence on multiple charges of murder.
In 1986 Andrija Artukovic of Surfside, Calif., the former interior minister of Croatia, was extradited to Yugoslavia and sentenced to death in 1986 after being convicted of mass murder. He died in prison in 1988 pending a decision on his appeal for clemency.
Also in 1986, John Demjanjuk of Cleveland was extradited to Israel, where he was convicted in 1988 of mass murder at the gas chambers of the Treblinka death camp in Poland. He was sentenced to death and his appeal is now before the Israeli Supreme Court.
Mr. Sher said his office, which was created in 1979 to track former Nazis in the United States, is currently pursuing 600 other cases, 25 of which are now at various stages of court proceedings.
''The Blach case is an excellent example of how we investigate these cases,'' he said, ''and how at this late date after the war we are able to find these people.''