The Region - News from Nov. 5, 1986

Deportation proceedings against retired La Habra grocery clerk Bruno Karl Blach, who is accused of lying about his service with the Nazi SS at the Dachau and Wiener Neudorf concentration camps, ended without Blach, a native of Czechoslovakia testifying in his own defense. “There was no need to,” Blach, 66, said after the hearing. “I did nothing wrong.” U.S. Immigration Judge James Vandello said he will rule on May 1, 1987, after reviewing transcripts of the hearing and briefs prepared by both sides. In final arguments, Blach’s lawyer, Ronald Parker, denied government assertions that his client murdered several camp prisoners. “Don’t lay the sins of the Third Reich on him,” he said. But Bruce Einhorn, representing the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, said there was overwhelming evidence to deport him--including an eyewitness, who claimed that he saw Blach machine-gun a feeble old man during a forced march in 1945.