FACES AND PLACES: Just say "no"! (01/08/06)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Just say "no"!

Ukrainian officials should just say "no" to U.S. demands that John Demjanjuk be deported to Ukraine.

Let's review the history of this sordid, 29-year debacle. John Demjanjuk entered the U.S. in 1952 and settled in the Cleveland area. In 1977 he was accused by the U.S. Office of Special Investigations (OSI) of being "Ivan the Terrible," mass murderer of thousands of Jews at the Nazi death camp at Treblinka, Poland. His name was part of a list of "Ukrainian war criminals" supplied to the OSI by John Hanusiak, a Stalinist, a member of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. and one-time editor of a Soviet-financed gazette in New York City.

Accused of lying about his "Nazi past" prior to his entering the U.S., Mr. Demjanjuk went to trial in 1981. Based on the testimony of aging Treblinka survivors - one of whom claimed earlier that he witnessed Ivan's death - and a fraudulent Trawniki training camp identity card supplied by the Soviets, Mr. Demjanjuk was found guilty, stripped of his citizenship, and ordered deported to Ukraine.

Israel, meanwhile, decided to intervene. Persuaded by the OSI that Demjanjuk's guilt was indisputable, Israel demanded extradition. He arrived in Israel in 1986 and, following a raucous show-trial conducted in an auditorium, was found guilty in 1988. He was sentenced to death amid cries of "death to all Ukrainians" in the courtroom. Mr. Demjanjuk's Israeli attorney appealed the sentence.

The appeal was still pending in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. Mr. Demjanjuk's lawyers gained access to Soviet files and produced testimony from 37 Treblinka guards and forced laborers that Mr. Demjanjuk was not Ivan the Terrible. In 1993 the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the guilty verdict, despite arguments by the prosecution that Mr. Demjanjuk was actually at Sobibor and Flossenberg, two other Nazi death camps, an allegation that was dismissed as face-saving and "fanciful" by experts familiar with the case. Mr. Demjanjuk returned to the U.S. and his citizenship was restored in 1998.

During the 22-year period between 1977 and 1998, a number of Ukrainian organizations and individuals in North America came to Mr. Demjanjuk's assistance. These included Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine, whose president, Bozhena Olshaniwsky, initiated a Demjanjuk Defense Fund, the Ukrainian American Justice Committee, the UNA Heritage Defense Committee, The Ukrainian Weekly, the Ukrainian American Bar Association, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, the Ukrainian Canadian Committee, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The late Ukrainian Canadian businessman Petro Jacyk donated thousands of dollars to the Demjanjuk defense. Ukrainian attorneys in the United States - Andrew Fylypovych and Jaroslaw Dobrowolskyj come immediately to mind - provided legal assistance, and Walter Anastas traveled to Israel as an observer. Ukrainian Canadian attorney Peter Chumak served as part of the Demjanjuk defense team in Israel. It is estimated that some $1 million dollars was raised by Ukrainians in North America for the defense.

It was also during this period that former OSI Director Allan A. Ryan Jr., who worked closely with the Soviets in obtaining "evidence" on Ukrainian "war criminals," penned his notorious book "Quiet Neighbors: Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals in America." Adopting the Soviet perspective regarding post-war Ukrainians who emigrated to the United States under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, 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 without coming right out and saying so." Mr. Ryan estimated that "nearly 10,000 Nazi war criminals came to America."

Mr. Ryan was succeeded at OSI by Neal Sher. It later came to light that during the tenure of these two men the OSI had purposely withheld from the Demjanjuk defense team, and later attempted to destroy, exculpatory documents. Learning of this mendacity, Gilbert Merritt, chief justice of the Sixth District Court, ruled that the OSI had engaged in "prosecutorial misconduct that constituted fraud upon the court."

Mr. Ryan eventually received a sinecure at Harvard University, where he continues to write and lecture about "Nazi war criminals." Mr. Sher later held various positions with Jewish organizations - including a stint in Canada searching for "Nazis" in the Ukrainian community - and eventually went to work for the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims. He was forced to resign in 2002 for misappropriation of commission funds for personal use.

The best published exposé of the entire Demjanjuk debacle was written by Israeli defense attorney Yoram Sheftel. Titled "The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show-Trial," (published in London in 1994), his book is an account of what the author believes was a conspiracy by Israel, the OSI and the USSR to convict an innocent man for purely political reasons. Israel needed another show-trial to remind its citizens and the world of the evils of Nazism. The OSI desperately needed to justify its existence. The Soviets needed to demonize Ukrainian anti-Soviets in the free world.

Mr. Sheftel was especially critical of Israeli prosecutors, describing them as a "cynical and malicious team" that was "not ashamed to file an indictment and plan a show-trial on the basis of such unconvincing and disgraceful evidence..."

There you have it, a thumbnail sketch of the behavior of the OSI, a federal agency with unlimited funds, accountable to no one, supported by your tax dollars. "Fanciful allegations" have now become the basis for the OSI's continuing, contemptible campaign against John Demjanjuk. This time, there are no witnesses or documentation for the unsubstantiated charge that Mr. Demjanjuk was at Sobibor and at Flossenberg. The cowardly and indolent American press won't question allegations presented by the OSI whose director, Eli Rosenbaum, is known to The Ukrainian Weekly readers for his virulent diatribes against those with whom he disagrees.

Thus far, the Ukrainian government doesn't appear overly anxious to accept Mr. Demjanjuk's extradition. According to Vasyl Filipchuk, spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Ukrainian law requires that "the U.S. court decision must be examined by competent Ukrainian officials such as the prosecutor general ... This could take years."

Ukraine can save itself the trouble by simply saying "no." Now!

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

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