FACES AND PLACES: OSI: still untouchable (09/14/03)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

OSI: still untouchable

It hardly seems possible, but it was exactly 10 years ago this September 22 that John Demjanjuk returned home to Cleveland after spending seven and a half years in solitary confinement in an Israeli jail.

For those Ukrainians unfamiliar with the Demjanjuk case - a whole generation has grown up since the day Mr. Demjanjuk's Cleveland trial began on February 10, 1981 - a brief review of the entire debacle seems in order.

John Demjanjuk was initially fingered as a death camp guard for the Nazis in 1975 by Michael Hanusiak, a pro-Soviet Ukrainian living in America. The following year Mr. Demjanjuk's alleged involvement with the Nazis was featured in Visti z Ukrainy, a Soviet Ukrainian publication.

Responding to Jewish American pressure, the U.S. Justice Department established the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in 1979 as a fully funded, premier Nazi-hunting institution. OSI officials traveled to Moscow, requesting assistance in the prosecution of Nazi "war criminals." Since most of those accused were Ukrainians or Balts, Moscow was happy to oblige.

Allan A. Ryan Jr. became the head of the OSI in 1980 and, with financial assistance from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), traveled throughout Israel drumming up support for the OSI.

Mr. Demjanjuk went on trial in Cleveland on February 10, 1981. It was a civil trial, which meant all defense expenses were borne by the defendant. The Soviets provided a German identity card allegedly placing Mr. Demjanjuk at the Nazi death camp Treblinka. Five Holocaust survivors identified him as the notorious "Ivan the Terrible." On June 23, Judge Frank Battisti ruled that Mr. Demjanjuk lied on his visa application. The Cleveland Jewish News published a teacher's guide and a video of the trial that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) distributed to America's public schools.

Israel requested Mr. Demjanjuk's extradition in November 1983. Israelis argued that, while the Eichmann trial was about Nazi crimes committed from the top, the Demjanjuk trial would focus on Nazi crimes from below, exposing non-German collaborators with "a history of anti-Semitism." A Ukrainian was the perfect fit.

Ihor and Bozhena Olshaniwsky of Americans for Human Rights for Ukraine (AHRU) were the first to establish a defense fund for the Demjanjuk family. On May 23, 1985, Judge Adolph Angellini ruled that Mr. Demjanjuk was deportable to Israel.

Mr. Ryan's book, "Quiet Neighbors: Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals in America" was published in 1985. "The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 was a brazenly discriminatory piece of legislation, written to exclude as many concentration camp survivors as possible and to include as many Baltic and Ukrainian and ethnic German Volksdeutsche as they could get away with," he wrote. "Had Congress tried to design a law that would extend the Statue of Liberty's hand to the followers and practitioners of Nazism, it could not have done much better than this ..." Mr. Ryan estimated that "nearly 10,000 Nazi war criminals were living in America."

In addition to AHRU, which established UNCHAIN as an anti-defamation affiliate, other institutions became involved with the Demjanjuk case. Included were The Ukrainian Weekly, the UNA Heritage Defense Committee, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, the Ukrainian American Bar Association, Americans for Due Process, the Coalition for Constitutional Justice and Security, and the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Ukrainians raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Demjanjuk defense. The late Peter Jacyk was a prime contributor.

Mr. Demjanjuk's appeals were rejected, and he arrived for trial in Israel on February 28, 1986. The trial commenced on February 16, 1987, and it was clear from the beginning that it was a show trial. Children were bused in to observe the proceedings. The three judges interrupted defense witnesses and defense counsel, held press conferences, read press clippings of the trial and permitted spectators to shout slurs. To no one's surprise, Mr. Demjanjuk was found guilty and was sentenced to death on April 25, 1988. "Death to Demjanjuk," "Death to all Ukrainians" shouted many of the spectators dancing with joy.

The appeal process to the Israeli Supreme Court began in 1992. The final decision was issued on July 29, 1993. Amazingly, the court accepted the identity card as authentic, the testimonies of the survivors as factual, and suggested that Mr. Demjanjuk was a camp guard elsewhere. Since there was incontrovertible evidence that "Ivan the Terrible" was Ivan Marchenko, however, the judges concluded there was "sufficient doubt" about Mr. Demjanjuk and that he, therefore, should be released.

During the trial it was discovered that the OSI had consistently withheld exculpatory evidence from the Demjanjuk defense. On November 17, 1993, a three-judge panel in Cincinnati headed by Judge Gilbert Merritt unanimously concluded that the OSI withheld evidence "in part to curry favor with Jewish organizations," engaging thereby in "prosecutorial misconduct that constituted fraud upon the court." The U.S. Supreme Court later let stand the lower court decision. Mr. Demjanjuk had his citizenship reinstated in February 20, 1998.

The case wasn't over, however, the OSI argued that even though Mr. Demjanjuk was not "Ivan the Terrible," he was still a guard at Sobibor, Majdanek and Flossenberg. A new trial was set to begin in May 2001. This time the OSI offered no witnesses, only foreign documents. The judge ruled in favor of the OSI, and Mr. Demjanjuk lost his citizenship for a second time. Today the 82-year-old Mr. Demjanjuk is in limbo once again.

Neal Sher, Mr. Ryan's successor, was OSI director until 1994. He left following accusations that the OSI withheld exculpatory evidence in the Andrija Artukovic deportation. Following a stint as an Israeli lobbyist, he jointed the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims. Last August he was disbarred for "unauthorized reimbursements of his ICHEIC travel expenses."

Today the OSI is headed by Eli Rosenbaum, a man who used the pages of The Ukrainian Weekly, via a letter to the editor published on June 28, 1977, to accuse Ukrainians who questioned OSI tactics of anti-Semitism. Despite a fraudulent record costing American taxpayers millions of dollars, no congressman or senator has ever dared call for oversight hearings of the OSI which, thanks to the Jewish lobby, remains untouchable.

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

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