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.