FACES AND PLACES: Israel sets Ukrainian agenda (02/18/96)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Israel sets Ukrainian agenda

Unlike the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany and other former Communist states, Ukraine never even considered bringing Soviet-era war criminals to justice.

Mass murderers have either expired peacefully like Lazar Kaganovich, emigrated, or are quietly living out their lives secure in the knowledge that they will never be brought to justice.

Rather than search for Soviet-era war criminals, Ukraine is now collaborating closely with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel to bring alleged Nazi-era war criminals to justice. Once again the world's attention is focused on the Jewish Holocaust while the Ukrainian holocaust which preceded it, is ignored.

According to a February 2 Reuters press release, Ukraine's security service admitted it was closely examining the case of Bohdan Koziy, a former Ukrainian policeman now living in the Central American state of Costa Rica. Anatoly Sakhno, a spokesman for the service, said criminal proceedings had already been launched three times against Bohdan Koziy on charges of persecuting Jews and shooting dead a 4-year old girl in the western Ukrainian town of Lysets.

As Ukrainian Americans know full well, Bohdan Koziy, an American citizen since 1956, was fingered by the Office of Special Investigations along with John Demjanjuk as a war criminal. Unlike Mr. Demjanjuk, however, Mr. Koziy left the United States to live in Costa Rica in 1984, before the OSI could honor Moscow's demand for his extradition.

Ivan Drach, an outstanding Ukrainian writer, has condemned the new campaign against Mr. Koziy as a resumption of "Soviet-era practices of tarring Ukrainian nationalists as Nazi collaborators."

"This is an old story," Mr. Drach said. "It dates from the time when Soviet secret services, especially the KGB, tried to make scapegoats out of Ukrainians. Ukraine never had a voice of its own to defend itself. There were no more collaborators among Ukrainians than any other nation in Eastern Europe."

According to a recent Internet site entry devoted to alleged Nazi war criminals, Costa Rica refused repeated past Soviet requests for Mr. Koziy's extradition because Costa Rica has no death penalty and refused to extradite to a country that did. Most of the information was supplied by Effraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center in Israel.

According to a February 1 Reuters release, Mr. Zuroff recently met with high-ranking Costa Rican officials including Vice-President Rebecca Grynspan, herself a member of the Jewish community, to explore the possibilities of having Mr. Koziy expelled. The officials told him Mr. Koziy can be expelled only if another country requests his extradition or under an executive order declaring him an undesirable alien. Mr. Zuroff said he will push for the latter option.

Interestingly, the same Reuters release indicated that a letter-writing campaign for Mr. Koziy's expulsion, launched by the World Jewish Congress in 1995, faded after news agencies reported that the lone surviving eyewitness to the alleged murder [of a 4-year old Jewish girl] had recanted, saying her testimony had been coerced by the Soviet KGB.

This was not good enough for Mr. Zuroff. There were other witnesses, all now apparently deceased, that the Soviets had interviewed. Since there were other witnesses, "it means nothing if one witness recants," Mr. Zuroff declared.

One can only wonder why it is that Israel is still hunting Nazi war criminals some 50 years after the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal came to an end. According to Adrian Hamilton of the London Observer the success ratio is dismal. "In 18 years of Nazi-hunting in Britain, Australia and Canada, only eight former Nazis have been brought to trial and only one of these ended in conviction," writes Mr. Hamilton.

How serious is Israel about its own war crimes? Not very, it appears. Last summer Israeli Attorney-General Michael Ben-Yair announced that Israel's law of limitations did not allow prosecution of Israeli veterans who wantonly massacred unarmed Egyptian prisoners of war (some 1,000 according to one historian) during the 1954 and 1976 wars with Egypt. Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's prime minister at the time, rejected calls to investigate allegations of Israeli atrocities arguing that these events were "exceptions."

Both Ukraine and Israel apparently have a double standard when it comes to Ukrainian nationalists.

While Ukraine's security service is collaborating with the Israelis, Alexander Naiman, director of the Kyiv Regional Branch of the Association for Jewish Studies and Culture, has compiled a list of alleged anti-Semitic articles that have appeared in various Ukrainian newspapers since the last visit of "60 Minutes." Mr. Naiman and Alina Polyak authored "Anti-Semitism and the Ukrainian Press," an article which appeared in the January 12 issue of The Jewish Press, a popular New York publication. Not unexpectedly, the word "zhyd" was consistently translated as "kike." The groundwork, it seems, is being laid for another CBS visit to Ukraine.

It's not as if Ukraine should ignore war crimes. In 1992, the Civil Liberties Commission (CLC) of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress published "War Crimes: A Submission to the Government of Ukraine on Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes" in English, French, Ukrainian and Russian urging the establishment of a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity that would investigate war crimes that took place on Ukrainian territory, before, during and after World War II. "Delay in mandating a commission will assist the vilification of Ukraine and Ukrainians in the West," the submission concluded. Although every parliamentarian and high-ranking official in Ukraine received a copy, nothing happened. As a result of the delay, others are dictating the war crimes agenda for Ukraine.

According to Prof. Lubomyr Luciuk, research director for Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (successor to the CLC), Ukraine's action is "a betrayal of everything the diaspora hoped for in a new Ukraine and are repudiation of the many sacrifices made by true patriots of Ukraine."

Alarmed by this recent development in Ukraine, the Ukrainian American Justice Committee has invited Prof. Luciuk, currently on a tour of Ukrainian communities in Canada, to Chicago. He will be speaking on March 16 and March 17 on the topic "The Murderers Amongst Us: Stalking Soviet War Criminals."

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