A federal appeals court has affirmed a lower court ruling revoking the naturalized U.S. citizenship of a Massachusetts man based on his service during World War II in a Nazi unit that participated in the destruction of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto in 1943, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced today.

A 20-page opinion issued yesterday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, unanimously affirmed a January 2005 ruling by a federal district court judge in Boston who revoked the U.S. citizenship of Vladas Zajanckauskas, 90, of Millbury, Mass. The appeals court ruled that the evidence of his "participation in the notorious World War II operation to clear and destroy the Warsaw Ghetto," and of his subsequent immigration fraud was "sufficient to meet the government's heavy burden of proof."