PITTSBURGH – A federal appeals court has refused to rehear the deportation case of a retired western Pennsylvania steelworker who served as a Nazi concentration camp guard during World War II.

The only recourse now for Anton Geiser, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled in June that Geiser, 83, of Sharon, should have his citizenship revoked and be deported because his work as a guard meets the type of persecutory conduct banned under the Refugee Relief Act, which was in effect when he entered the U.S.

His attorneys had wanted the three-judge appellate panel or the entire 3rd Circuit to rehear the case. The appeals court refused last week. Geiser's attorney, Adrian Roe, declined to comment Thursday.

Geiser, an ethnic German born in what is now Croatia, was drafted into the German army at 17 and served as an armed SS Death Head guard at Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin for much of 1943.

He later was transferred to an SS officer training camp at Arolsen, where he escorted prisoners to and from the Buchenwald camp, where tens of thousands of Jews and others were exterminated. He was at Arolsen until April 1945.

Geiser has denied harming any prisoners, though he said he had orders to shoot prisoners who tried to escape.

He was granted a United States visa in 1956 and became a citizen in 1962. He did not cite his Nazi ties on his U.S. visa application, but has said he was never asked about them.

Geiser is not accused of lying about his Nazi ties. Files from the period have been lost and it is not clear what questions he was asked.

Roe argued to the 3rd Circuit this year that guards not deemed war criminals were sometimes allowed into the U.S. He said the Justice Department, in its efforts to expel former Nazis, was revisiting decisions made five decades ago.

Geiser told federal authorities he told his family of his wartime service only after the government filed its civil lawsuit in 2004. Geiser has lived in Sharon, about 60 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, since June 1960. He and his wife have three sons. He retired from Sharon Steel in 1987.