SHARON — Diane Dach burst into tears at the news.

Jack Sittsamer was not ready to celebrate, but he sullenly proclaimed that justice had been done.

The news that a federal judge had revoked the citizenship of a Sharon man who had served as a Nazi concentration camp guard elicited sympathy from people on both sides of the issue.

Anton Geiser, 81, has lived a quiet life at 411 Cedar Ave. for 45 years. And while the U.S. government, which sought to revoke his citizenship, offered no evidence that he had ever harmed anyone while he carried a loaded rifle and patrolled the grounds of three concentration camps, the judge determined that his service was enough to exclude him from entering the U.S.

“I think it’s a travesty,” said Ms. Dach,” a neighbor of Geiser who has known him her entire life. “It’s terrible.”

She referred to the fact that Geiser, an ethnic German who grew up in a part of Yugoslavia that is now part of western Croatia, was drafted into the German army at age 17 and made a member of the Waffen SS under a German policy to conscript ethnic Germans into military service.

“He was an innocent kid.” she said. “He had no choice. He did nothing bad.”

Thomas Forker, 50, who had known Geiser while growing up in Sharon, said he was saddened by Cercone’s order.

“Nothing good comes out of this,” Forker told the Associated Press. “It’s sad this happened at this stage of his life.”

While Forker said he hasn’t seen Geiser in about 15 years, he recalled Geiser’s family as being exemplary and Geiser being “honest to a fault.”

Forker said he has doubts about the government’s charges. “In my opinion, war does crazy things to all its citizens,” he said.

Geiser, who came to the U.S. in 1956, did not return a message for comment. His attorneys, Jay K. Reisinger and Samuel J. Reich, Pittsburgh, issued a statement that they would appeal the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge David S. Cercone, Pittsburgh, but they declined to take questions about it.

“Hopefully, they can do something about it,” Ms. Dach said of his attorneys.

U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, Pittsburgh, said Geiser must ask a court to postpone the imposition of Cercone’s order so that he can appeal. The court is under no obligation to grant the delay, she said.

Ms. Buchanan also said appeals courts have upheld similar denaturalization determinations in other cases.

Eli M. Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, told the AP that the government will work to remove Geiser from the country “as swiftly as possible.”

“The law is very clear on this issue,” she said.

Sittsamer, 81, a Holocaust survivor who lives in Pittsburgh, said he expects the appeals will allow Geiser to live out his life in the U.S.

“Mr. Geiser, he lived a good life,” said Sittsamer, president of the Pittsburgh Holocaust Survivors Organization. “I’m not jumping up and down for joy because I feel sorry for his family.”

However, Sittsamer said he is satisfied with the judge’s decision.

“Justice always prevails,” said Sittsamer, who lived in six concentration camps and lost his family — four siblings, his mother, eight aunts and uncles and a number of cousins — in the Holocaust.

Sittsamer, who weighed 71 pounds when he was liberated by the U.S. Army at age 19, called living in the U.S. a “privilege,” and said Geiser abused that privilege by not telling his whole story to officials when he sought to enter the country. Geiser acknowledged his service in the German army, but not as camp guard, to U.S. officials when he applied to come to America.

Ms. Buchanan said Geiser was admitted under “false pretenses.”

Sittsamer added that Geiser’s depiction of himself as a kind guard who at one point made friends with those he guarded and felt a kinship to their predicament does not gibe with his experiences with Croatian guards.

“The SS was bad,” he said, “but the Croatian guards were worse than the Germans. They were mean. They wanted to show their loyalty.”

Ms. Buchanan showed no sympathy for Geiser or his plight.

“Individuals like Anton Geiser, who assisted the Nazis in their quest to extinguish the lives of innocent men, women and children, do not deserve the benefits of U.S. citizenship,” she said.

Central to the government’s case was the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, which outlawed granting a visa to anyone “who personally advocated or assisted in the persecution of any person of group of persons because of race, religion and national origin.”

Geiser’s attorneys claimed the term “persecution” was ambiguous, which forces courts to defer to a State Department policy of granting visas to camp guards who were not war criminals.

Cercone said in his ruling handed down Friday that the term is not ambiguous and the State Department had no such policy.

The law also makes no reference to whether a guard’s service was voluntary, Cercone said.

That narrowed the issue to whether Geiser, who retired in 1987 after 31 years at Sharon Steel Corp., persecuted anyone.

“It is undisputed that persecution occurred at the locations where Geiser served,” Cercone said.

At Sachsenhausen alone, more than 3,000 prisoners were murdered or died from brutal treatment while Geiser served there in 1943, U.S. officials said.

“Geiser was a guard who was issued a uniform, armed with a rifle, received wages, and took leave to visit home,” the judge said. “He admits to standing guard over prisoners at Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Arolsen. He also admits to receiving orders to shoot escaping prisoners, although he never did so. Nevertheless, his personal presence as an armed guard clearly assisted in the persecution of the prisoners.”

“Anton Geiser’s service as an armed SS guard at several Nazi concentration camps helped to ensure that thousands of men and women held prisoner could not escape the brutal conditions of their confinement,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney General Alice S. Fisher.

Geiser was ineligible to be granted a visa, which made him ineligible for permanent residence, the judge said.

Cercone revoked Geiser’s citizenship, vacated the March 27, 1962, order of Mercer County Common Pleas Court granting him citizenship, canceled his naturalization certificate, and ordered that his naturalization certificate, passports and other citizenship papers be surrendered to the attorney general within 14 days.

Once those documents are turned over, Geiser will be subject to deportation, Ms. Buchanan said. She noted deportation is an administrative procedure, so it is difficult to say how long such a move might take. One of the important factors is finding a country willing to take him, she said.

The case against Geiser is part of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations efforts to identify and take legal action against former Nazis who participated in persecutions and are living in the U.S. It has won cases against 103 and prevented 175 from coming into the country.

Ms. Buchanan noted many of the files OSI is using come from foreign governments and have been made available to U.S. officials only in recent years.