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Ukrainian Weekly, The

03-03-2002

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.