| Jakob “Jack” Reimer (November 6, 1918 – August 3, 2005) right, arrives at court with his lawyer, former Attorney General Ramsey R. Clark (December 18, 1927 – April 9, 2021), in New York in 1998. Reimer was a Nazi mass murderer trained in Trawniki, a village in southeastern Poland, that author Debbie Cenziper describes as “one of the most diabolical operations in the Holocaust.” The Trawniki was a concentration camp set up by Nazi Germany in the village of Trawniki about 40 kilometers (20 miles) southeast of Lublin during the occupation of Poland. Throughout its existence the camp served a dual function. It was organized on the grounds of the former Polish sugar refinery of the Central Industrial Region, and subdivided into at least 3 distinct zones. In 1940, Reimer was drafted into the Soviet Army. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Reimer entered combat and was captured by German forces on July 6. 2 months later, due to his Germanic heritage and language skills, he was recruited to the Trawniki concentration camp for training as a camp guard. While serving as a camp guard, Reimer participated in the liquidation of Jewish ghettos in Poland, in addition to administrative and office duties. On 1 occasion, Reimer fired a shot while at a pit containing corpses and at least 1 live civilian, which would later prove pivotal in his United States denaturalization trial. In 1944, he received a War Merit Cross for his service, and was promoted to SS-Oberzugwachmann (“SS Senior Platoon Guard”) in 1945. In 1944, Reimer gained German citizenship after Adolf Hitler made all ethnic German military and police personnel eligible for German citizenship. In 1952, Reimer applied for a visa to the United States and was naturalized as a United States citizen on April 28, 1959. During his time in the United States, he worked as a Wise potato chip salesman and a restaurant manager, and lived in Brooklyn, New York. After he retired, he moved to Carmel, New York, and was living in Fort Lee, New Jersey at the time of his death. Reimer was 1st investigated by American authorities in 1980 in connection with the John Demjanjuk case, but minimal progress was made during this initial investigation. Not until the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of Communism in the Eastern Bloc did investigators make substantial progress, as formerly restricted archives were opened up to Western historians. In 1992 the Office of Special Investigations filed a denaturalization suit against Reimer, and following a bench trial in 1998, Reimer was denaturalized on September 5, 2002. He appealed his denaturalization, but the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld it on January 27, 2004. In 2005, the government sought to deport Reimer, and he agreed to leave for Germany, but he died before his deportation could be completed. Reimer, who was Trawniki recruit Number 865, figured predominantly in “Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler’s Hidden Soldiers in America.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii0614.jpg |
| Image Size | 718.65 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2048 x 1851 |
| Photographer | Mitch Jacobson |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | August 17, 1998 |
| Location | |
| City | New York |
| State or Province | New York |
| Country | United States |
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| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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