1986: A LOOK BACK: The hunt for Nazis (12/28/86)

1986: A LOOK BACK

The hunt for Nazis

The biggest news of 1986 as concerns what we have conveniently labelled "the Nazi hunt" was no doubt the extradition to Israel of John Demjanjuk, a former Cleveland autoworker accused of being "Ivan the Terrible," a brutal guard at the Treblinka death camp.

Mr. Demjanjuk was extradited from the United States on February 27. He was finally charged seven months later, on September 29, with crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes and murder. The indictment was 17 pages long in Hebrew (26 pages in English translation). Mr. Demjanjuk faces the death penalty if found guilty; his is the second war crimes trial to be held in Israel.

The trial began on November 26, not January 19 as first scheduled, when it became evident that under Israeli law a trial must begin no later than 60 days after a defendant is charged. Thus the trial officially opened and after less than an hour was recessed until January 19.

On December 17 it was learned that the Soviets had agreed to cooperate with the Israelis in the prosecution of Mr. Demjanjuk. Through the personal intervention of American industrialist Armand Hammer the USSR released to Israeli authorities the original Trawniki ID card purportedly issued by the Nazis to Mr. Demjanjuk at the Trawniki training camp for guards. The authenticity of this card had been challenged in the United States, however, when it was used against Mr. Demjanjuk by the Office of Special Investigations. In addition, many in the United States and Israel have questioned the propriety of using evidence provided by the Soviets who are known for their disinformation apparatus.

Mr. Demjanjuk and his attorney continue to maintain that the 66-year-old Ukrainian is a victim of mistaken identity. This claim has been bolstered by reports from various sources that the real "Ivan" was killed by Treblinka inmates. In addition, a reproduction of the ID card allegedly issued to Mr. Demjanjuk that appeared along with an article titled "The Vampire Lived in Cleveland" in the April 30 issue of Molod Ukrainy, a newspaper published in Ukraine, was different from the ID card seen earlier in the U.S. and reproduced in "Quiet Neighbors," the book by former OSI director Allan A. Ryan Jr. Among the discrepancies: the photographs of the person alleged to be Ivan Demjanjuk and their positions on the ID cards differ. Also some of the handwritten notations by a Soviet translator do not appear on the Molod Ukrainy version.

So, which "authentic original" was forwarded by the Soviets to Israel?

In other developments in the Demjanjuk case, in July family members and in October Bishop Antony of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church traveled to Israel to meet with Mr. Demjanjuk. A fact-finding visit to Israel was also undertaken in July by a delegation from Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine, a group that had been active in raising funds for the Demjanjuk defense.

Upon his return to the United States, Bishop Antony began a whirlwind tour of Ukrainian Orthodox parishes in an effort to inform the public about the status of the Demjanjuk case and raise funds for his defense. His partner on the tour was Edward Nishnic, son-in-law of Mr. Demjanjuk and president/administrator of the family-controlled John Demjanjuk Defense Fund. Bishop Antony will be the Ukrainian Orthodox Church's official observer at the Demjanjuk trial once it resumes in January.

A Jewish businessman from the Cleveland area, Martin Lax, in November established the Adequate Representation Fund, whose goal is to raise funds for the Demjanjuk defense. Mr. Lax reasoned that Mr. Demjanjuk is entitled to a fair trial and adequate legal representation, and he said he hopes to receive $600,000 in donations from Jews across the United States.

In the United States, the Office of Special Investigations continued its hunt for Nazis. Among the most important developments in various cases were the following.

The Supreme Court on November 10 agreed to hear the case of Juozas Kungys, a Lithuanian emigre who misrepresented the date and place of his birth when entering this country and when applying for citizenship. At issue is whether such misrepresentations are material and are reason enough to strip the defendant of his citizenship. The Kungys defense was supported in its appeal to the highest court by an amicus curiae brief initiated by the Ukrainian National Association's Heritage Defense Committee and signed by several other Ukrainian and East European organizations.

The OSI alleges that Mr. Kungys participated in the extermination of more than 2,000 Jews in Lithuania during World War II. The case will probably be argued before the Supreme Court in the spring of next year.

The Supreme Court declined, however, to hear the case of another East European suspected of Nazi complicity. On December 1 the court voted not to hear the case of Estonian Karl Linnas (the vote was 6 to 3, one vote short of what is needed to grant review). Two days later, Justice Thurgood Marshall granted a 25-day stay of deportation in order to allow Mr. Linnas' attorney, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark to file a petition for a rehearing before the Supreme Court. Mr. Linnas is accused of concealing his background as commandant of a Nazi death camp in Tartu, Estonia. A lower court had ordered him deported to the USSR where in 1962, in absentia, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. The verdict of the Soviet trial was announced in the press even before the proceedings had begun.

Back in the USSR, Feodor Fedorenko, the first person to be extradited from the United States to the Soviet Union as a suspected war criminal, was found guilty on June 19 of treason and mass murder by a court in Simferopil, Crimea, in the Ukrainian SSR. He was sentenced to death, but the execution date was not announced.

The defamation campaign against Ukrainians and other East Europeans continued as Mr. Ryan continued to insist that the U.S. is harboring 10,000 war criminals - and he said this is a conservative estimate.

One of the targets of attack was Mykola Lebed, a prominent leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, who was branded a Nazi collaborator by The Village Voice in February. His longtime associate, Roman Kupchinsky of Prolog Research, called the Voice's article replete with "total distortions" and "deliberate manipulation of facts." A statement by the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council's External Representation protested this defamation of the Ukrainian liberation movement and one of its leaders.

Though the defamation of East Europeans as Nazi collaborators continued, awareness of their concerns was on the upswing.

In April, the Los Angeles Times published a two-part series on the questionable use of Soviet-supplied evidence by the Office of Special Investigations in its prosecution of denaturalization and deportation cases. The series by Robert Gillette was the first in a major newspaper to focus on the concerns of East European Americans as regards the OSI issue.

On July 13 The Washington Post reported that the OSI was now becoming sensitive to charges that it was using fraudulent Soviet evidence in its work, and on August 29, Post correspondent Jay Matthews wrote that Karl Linnas should be tried for war crimes in the U.S. instead of being shipped off to the Soviet Union where he faces the death sentence handed down in 1962.

On September 28, The Washington Post printed an article by Patrick Buchanan, White House communications director, which argued that John Demjanjuk is a victim of mistaken identity and that the infamous Trawniki ID card was in fact a forgery crafted by the Soviets.

Other news media, too, began to see things in a different light.

In Canada, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney decided in early 1985 to establish a royal commission to investigate the possible presence of war criminals in Canada, he reportedly did so against the advice of senior advisers in his own office and the Justice Department.

Almost two years later, Quebec Superior Court Justice Jules Deschenes, the head of the one man commission, has submitted his two-part report to the government, which has until the end of the first half of January to decide what to do with the explosive document.

Throughout his 22-month investigation, Judge Deschenes has shrouded the work of the commission in a tight blanket of secrecy. No one, not even the minister of justice, was to have had knowledge of the judge's key recommendations before the report was handed over to the government.

On December 12, however, The Globe and Mail Canada's national newspaper, carried a front-page report by Michael Bociurkiw that outlined the judge's findings. Quoting unidentified government sources, the report said the government would be advised of the following legal options to deal with the presence of war criminals in Canada:

creating a permanent war criminals investigative unit similar to the U.S. Office of Special Investigations;
amending the Criminal Code to allow war criminals to be tried in Canada according to Canadian rules of evidence;
negotiating extradition treaties with Israel and the Soviet Union so that war criminals can be deported to those countries for trial.

The judge was also said to have recommended judicial action against more than 12 Canadian residents. It was also reported that the commission will refer more than 50 cases to the federal government for further investigation.

The Globe and Mail report prompted Jewish leaders to applaud the work of the Deschenes Commission.

"We are, of course, well pleased with Justice Deschenes' recommendations and findings and congratulate him for a job well done," said a December 12 statement by the Toronto office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Eastern European community leaders, however, said most of the options listed are unacceptable, particularly the proposal to set up an OSI-type body on Canadian soil.

Several Eastern European leaders said privately that the reported recommendations handed down by Judge Deschenes appear to have come from submissions submitted by Jewish groups during the commission's public hearings.

In interviews with Jewish and Eastern European leaders, however, there was unanimous agreement that Judge Deschenes' recommendation to amend the Criminal Code would most likely arouse the least controversy.

The government is expected to release the public section of the report - which includes descriptions of some 800 cases investigated by the commission - early in the New Year.

But few people expect the government to respond quickly to the report despite the Wiesenthal Center's plea that the government must move quickly because it does "not have unlimited time to bring World War II war criminals to justice."

In Australia, the government set up a Deschenes-type probe to determine what course of action to take on the war criminals issue. The investigation was launched on June 5, and Andrew Menzies, a retired bureaucrat from the attorney general's office, was named its head.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry had requested the inquiry after it obtained information on some 150 suspected war criminals in the country, including Balts, Ukrainians and Germans. The Simon Wiesenthal Center gave the Australian government the names and addresses of 40 suspected war criminals in Australia - all of them Latvians and Lithuanians - it was reported in October.

Then, on December 5, the Menzies probe recommended the establishment of an OSI-type unit in Australia to seek out Nazi war criminals. Whether such a unit should be established and how it should operate are left to a decision of the government that is expected in early 1987.

In other developments, the Wiesenthal Center also provided lists of Nazi suspects to Sweden (12 names), Canada, (26), Britain (17), Venezuela (3) and Brazil (1).

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