1 COATS UNLIMITED EA STER W EEK CRUISE INCLUDES AIRFARE mvH01VIERIC I NEWS I Sterling Heights Sterling Place 37680 Van Dyke at 16 1/2 Mile 939-0700 Oak Park Lincoln Center, Greenfield at 10 1 / 2 Mile 968-2060 (Italian Crew) April 2-9, 1988 West Bloomfield Orchard Mall, Orchard Lake at Maple (15 Mile) • 855-9955 Inside Cabin $1460 Outside Cabin $1760 San Juan, St. Thomas, St. Croix, Nassau U.S. Strips Ex-Kapo Of His Citizenship ARTHUR J. MAGIDA Special to The Jewish News T s.s COSTA RIVIERA April 2-9, 1988 • • • • Outside Cabins $1439-$1510 St. Thomas, St. Croix, Nassau Both Departures From Ft. Lauderdale 00 /?,„q 4-4% ste,k Seth' (c15/ 444 fiV1\ CALL YOUR TRAVEL AGENT or vgillw (313) 827-4070, Open Sun. 10-2 For Calls framing custom designing instruction finishing 's o `140 0/ >>. /...4 fr e 1? 9e 64114 1111 Hamilton, Miller, Hudson & Fayne Travel Corporation //1) ‘/04/ 69e4 e `'eeee -/.eo WELCOME .. . To Top of the Lamp We specialize in lamp shades, lamps (floor, table and wall), lamp repair and lamp parts. Top of the Lamp has thousands of beautiful replacement lamp shades to choose from. Plus we have hundreds of lamps to brighten up your home or office. We are open for business, so let's get acquainted soon. "Bring your lamp base in for proper shade fitting" TOP of the LAMP 8461 Wayne Road Westland 525-0570 WESTLAND FORD RD. WARREN ■ SOUTH FI ELD z . d N `g t 12 MILE p w wit- IN PLYMOUTH RD. o rm JOY 559-5630 L - - - .-. ANN ARBOR TR. NEW LOCATION 17621 W. Twelve Mile Lathrup Village Hours: Monday-Thursday 9 30-5:30; Friday 9:30-8:00; Saturday 9:30-5:30 en months after , charges were filed against him, a Brooklyn Jew has pleaded guilty to government charges that he had brutalized Jewish prisoners in a Nazi forced- labor camp during World War Two. In exchange for surrender- ing his U.S. citizenship to a federal judge in Brooklyn, the Justice Department agreed not to deport Jacob Tannen- baum, 77, because of his ad- vanced age and the fragility of his health. Last August, Tannenbaum collapsed during the second of three days of deposition- taking before federal officials in Brooklyn. He was hospital- ized for two weeks for a heart attack. Physicians for both sides -subsequently agreed that a full-scale trial would be life-threatening to Tannen- baum. The government had charged that Tannenbaum had been a kapo from Sep- tember, 1944 through May 1945 in Goerlitz, a small camp 55 miles east of Dres- den. Tannenbaum admitted to government charges that he had beaten fellow prison- ers, sometimes "outside the presence of German SS per- sonnel." He also acknowl- edged that he had lied about his background when he entered the United States in 1949. Tannenbaum now retains citizenship in no country. He will remain in the United States as a "permanent resi- dent." According to his lawyer, Manhattan attorney Elihu Massel, Tannenbaum was "very disturbed that he had to give up his American citizenship. This was the first country in which he lived where he wasn't persecuted as a Jew. But his children (two sons and a daughter) were happy he would remain in the United States and no longer be under duress. They understood this was a plea to save their father's life." Tannenbaum was born in Sieniawa, Poland. Con- scripted into the Polish Army, he was sent to three Nazi camps during World War Two. After some time in a Polish camp in 1942, he was sent with other relatively healthy prisoners to a forced-labor camp in Galicia. In 1944, he was sent as a kapo to Goerlitz, where he supervised about 1,000 prisoners, who mostly worked in a munitions fac- tory. Aside from the issue of whether Tannenbaum had lied to get into the United States 39 years ago, the Tan- nenbaum case presented some especially perplexing moral issues. Among these was whether Jewish kapos who beat, killed or otherwise mistreated prisoners were as morally culpable as the Nazis themselves. The Tannenbaum case was the first brought by Office of Special Investigations (OSI) against a Jewish kapo. OSI is the adjunct of the Justice Department created to pro- secute Nazi-related cases. In the 1950s, the Immigration and Naturalization Depart- ment had sought the deporta- tions of three Jewish kapos. Two of these were denied. Another was deported to Poland, which refused to ac- cept him. Shortly after the OSI filed charges last May to deport Tannenbaum, Tannenbaum and his family told journalists conflicting stories of his ten months in Goerlitz. One of Tannenbaum's sons, Sonny, said Tannenbaum had told his family and close friends that he had, in fact, been a kapo. But Tannenbaum told reporters that he only been a )ersonal aide to the camp commandant at Goerlitz. His only privilege different from other prisoners, he said, was to occasionally go into town for supplies. In late May, The Jewish News interviewed several sur- vivors of Goerlitz, who said Tannenbaum habitually beat prisoners with a rubber hose, an iron pipe or his bare fists. These caused, they said, at least four deaths. Leon Hostig, a prisoner in Goerlitz for about nine months in 1844 and 1945, was "terribly disappointed" by the outcome of the Tannen- baum case. "The punishment did not fit the crime," said Hostig, a 67-year-old resident of Brooklyn. Hostig has claimed that Tannenbaum fatally beat his brother, Avram, dur- ing the boy's first day in Goerlitz in September, 1944. Avram was 19 years old. Neither Tannenbaum's age nor his health should have been a factor in resolving his case, said Hostig. "He was a murderous guy, the only killer in Goerlitz,"