By
The Associated Press
VILNIUS, Lithuania - A member of a Nazi-sponsored Lithuanian battalion blamed for the killings of nearly 20,000 Jews has returned to his homeland after U.S. courts ordered his deportation, officials said yesterday.
Juozas Naujalis, 81, a retired Chicago-area machinist, flew to this former Soviet republic on March 15. Lithuanian prosecutors disclosed his arrival this week.
In February, the U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with an earlier decision by the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals to deport Naujalis because of his service in the 2nd Lithuanian Schutzmannschaft Battalion during the 1941-44 Nazi occupation.
The appeals court concluded the group helped the Germans march victims to killing fields, forced them to lie in pits and then shot them. The battalion is believed to have murdered nearly 20,000 Jewish men, women and children.
Naujalis, a U.S. resident for the past 50 years who lived in Cicero, Ill., denied participating in atrocities. He said he only guarded railway stations, but U.S. judges rejected those claims.
Lithuanian Prosecutor Rimvydas Valentukevicius said an investigation opened against Naujalis last year was continuing and that he could be indicted. But he said the hunt for evidence that can be used in court will be "very difficult."
"The U.S. courts only considered evidence that he served in the battalion. But we have to find concrete evidence of a concrete crime. We haven't found that yet, but we're still looking," Valentukevicius said in a telephone interview.
After breaking with Moscow in 1991, Lithuania pledged to prosecute those who took part in killing nearly 240,000 Lithuanian Jews during World War II. Only one alleged Nazi, 93-year-old Kazys Gimzauskas, has been convicted.
