Discovery
Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal had followed her trail from a tip in Tel Aviv to Vienna to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and then, via Toronto, to Queens. In 1964 Wiesenthal alerted the New York Times that Braunsteiner might have married a man named Ryan and might live in the Maspeth area of the Borough of Queens in New York. They assigned Joseph Lelyveld, then a young reporter, to find "Mrs. Ryan." They first lived at 54-44 82nd St. in western Elmhurst and moved to 52-11 72nd St. in Maspeth. He found her at the second doorbell he rang, and later wrote that she greeted him at her front doorstep and said, "My God, I knew this would happen. You've come."
Braunsteiner Ryan stated that she had been at Maidanek only a year, eight months of which in the camp infirmary. "My wife, sir, wouldn't hurt a fly" said Ryan. "There's no more decent person on this earth. She told me this was a duty she had to perform. It was a conscriptive service." On August 22, 1968, United States authorities sought to revoke her citizenship because she had failed to disclose her convictions for war crimes; she was denaturalized in 1971 after entering into a consent judgment to avoid deportation.
Read more about this topic: Hermine Braunsteiner
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