FACES AND PLACES: The Demjanjuk debacle revisited (03/03/02)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

The Demjanjuk debacle revisited

What does the U.S. federal government do with John Demjanjuk when despite decades of research, millions of wasted dollars, reams of legal papers, years of media manipulation, and falsified evidence, the Israeli Supreme Court finds him not guilty? Is the persecution over? Not on your life.

If Mr. Demjanjuk wasn't the sadistic, sword-wielding "Ivan the Terrible" of Treblinka, then he surely had to be "Ivan the Very Bad" of Sobibor, Maidanek, or Flossenburg.

You have to hand it to Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and legally sanctioned poster-boy of Ukrainophobia. He knows that to maintain his high-paying job in the federal government, he must regularly produce a pound of flesh.

Mr. Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian American, was convicted in a Cleveland civil court of lying about his wartime activity - (which, according to the OSI, included his identity as "Ivan the Terrible," the sadistic Nazi guard who gloried in killing Jews, especially children. A major piece of evidence was a Soviet-doctored identity card. Mr. Demjanjuk was stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 1981 and extradited to Israel, where he was tried for crimes against humanity. The nationally televised trial was conducted in a concert hall. Israeli teachers brought elementary school children to view the real live Nazi on trial. He was convicted and sentenced to hang in 1993.

According to Israeli defense attorney Yoram Sheftel, author of "The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show-Trial," spectators "greeted the verdict with curses and screaming insults. 'Death, death, death to Ivan,' 'death to the defense attorney, 'death to all Ukrainians, death, death, death.' The people were dancing, stamping their feet, waving fists in the air." All for the benefit of the TV audience.

The verdict was appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court at about the time the USSR was imploding. This allowed the defense team to travel to Ukraine, search the KGB files, and to discover that Mr. Demjanjuk was not "Ivan the Terrible." Based on the new evidence, the Israelis Supreme Court reluctantly exonerated him. In 1993, after spending seven and a half years in an Israeli gaol, he was allowed to return to the United States. There were no apologies from either Israel or the United States.

Mr. Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship was restored, and Ukrainians thought the matter was settled, especially after the OSI was condemned by a federal appeals court for "reckless" disregard of the rights of the accused by failing to disclose potentially exculpatory evidence. According to Mr. Sheftel, there was evidence, moreover, that the OSI and Israeli officials had conspired to convict Mr. Demjanjuk with false evidence. "The manufacture of deceptive evidence by officers of the law in both countries makes one's blood run cold," wrote Mr. Sheftel.

So why did OSI decide to go after Mr. Demjanjuk again? The obvious answer is that Mr. Rosenbaum and his cohorts needed to restore their credibility. Rectification was needed. A new Demjanjuk trial began in 1999. This time, of course, there was no mention of Treblinka. Nor were there any witnesses. Instead, the OSI presented what Mr. Rosenbaum called "a mountain of evidence" alleging that Mr. Demjanjuk had lied about his wartime experiences.

Eight months after the trial ended, Judge Paul Matia ruled that there was enough evidence without eyewitness corroboration to prove that Mr. Demjanjuk had guarded Nazi death and forced-labor camps.

So when will it all end? It won't. Certain Jewish American leaders are determined to keep the Holocaust alive in order to promote "guilt." Concerned in the early 1970s that Israel was being forgotten in world affairs, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) launched an aggressive campaign to market the Holocaust "against the background of a powerful 'J'Accuse' that is now submitting its bill 'for Sufferings Rendered,' " writes Peter Novick in his groundbreaking monograph, "Holocaust in American Life." Sensing a great opportunity to elevate American consciousness of Jewish victimhood, other Jewish organizations, academics and individuals signed on.

The Holocaust has since become big business. It keeps Jewish organizations financially solvent, produces countless books, articles and films, and it protects Israel from ever being perceived in an unattractive light. "The Holocaust framework," writes Mr. Novick, allows "one to put aside as irrelevant any legitimate grounds for criticizing Israel..."

Mr. Rosenbaum and the OSI enjoy the unequivocal blessing of the powerful Jewish lobby which has convinced many that the Holocaust was a uniquely Jewish affair. Jewish suffering in the 20th century is like no one else's, and even if one disagrees, it is better to remain silent lest one be accused of anti-Semitism. To suggest that the destruction of 7 million Ukrainians by the Bolsheviks in the 1932-1933 famine in Soviet Ukraine was perhaps just as evil as the Holocaust is to dishonor in some grotesque way, the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. Identifying genocide among other oppressed groups, in the words of Jewish intellectuals, is "Holocaust envy" - a form of plundering the "moral capital" that Jews had accumulated with their anguish. Turks, for example, had a "rational reason" for the Armenian Massacre, declared Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz. The Germans had no sane reason to kill Jews.

So what will happen to Mr. Demjanjuk? Mr. Demjanjuk's attorneys have appealed the latest ruling and the process will drag through the courts for months, maybe even years. If Mr. Demjanjuk is still around after all that time - he does have remarkable survivor skills - he will probably be extradited to Ukraine where, thanks to Jewish influence, he will be tried again.

With unlimited public funds, the Office of Special Investigations will continue for as long as there are congressmen who are willing to spend our dollars to support it. Will the OSI investigate crimes committed by Jews now living in the United States as suggested by Israeli journalist John Sacks in "An Eye for An Eye"? Forget it. The Office of Special Investigations will never investigate former Jewish capos who worked in extermination camps because their situation, was "different." Nor will Israel extradite known mass murders living in their midst because, in words of Israeli officials, too much time has passed.

How sad it is that a great nation like the United States is now hostage to the OSI, a group of vengeance-bent miscreants posturing as seekers of justice.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: [email protected].

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