Posted on 04/14/2009 6:40:43 AM PDT by seatrout
On Good Friday, John Demjanjuk, 89 and gravely ill, was ordered deported to Germany to stand trial as an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews -- at Sobibor camp in Poland.
Sound familiar? It should. It is a re-enactment of the 1986 extradition of John Demjanjuk to Israel to be tried for the murder of 870,000 Jews -- at Treblinka camp in Poland.
How many men in the history of this country have been so relentlessly pursued and remorselessly persecuted?
The ordeal of this American Dreyfus began 30 years ago.
In 1979, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) at Justice, goaded and guided by Yuri Andropov's KGB, was persuaded that Demjanjuk was "Ivan the Terrible," a huge, brutal, sadistic guard at Treblinka, who bashed in babies' heads and slashed off women's breasts, as he drove hundreds of thousands of Jews into the gas chambers.
Demjanjuk's defense was simple: I was never at Treblinka.
Yet, a dozen survivors, shown a photo spread, identified him as the beast of Treblinka. In 1986, OSI had him extradited to Israel. In 1988, he was convicted and sentenced to death. The greatest Holocaust monster since Mengele was to be hanged.
His family, friends and lawyers did not give up. They scoured Europe and, in the last days of the Soviet Union, struck pay dirt. In Moscow's files on Treblinka they discovered a photo of the real "Ivan," a far bigger, more mature man than the 23-year-old Demjanjuk in 1943.
Ivan Marchenko was positively identified as Ivan the Terrible.
To its eternal credit, Israel's Supreme Court threw aside the verdict and stopped Demjanjuk from being the first man hanged in Jerusalem since Adolf Eichmann in 1961.
A humiliated OSI, through its Israeli friends, now asked the court to authorize a new trial, charging Demjanjuk with having been a guard at Sobibor -- during the same time they previously charged he had been at Treblinka.
What OSI was admitting was that its case against Demjanjuk, to see him hang from the gallows as "Ivan the Terrible," had been based on flimsy or falsified evidence and worthless or perjured testimony.
Replied the court, we don't do double jeopardy here in Israel.
Demjanjuk was released. And the grin of the jailer who opened his cell testified that many in Israel never accepted the charge that this simple man was some unrivaled devil of the Holocaust.
So, after 13 years, the last four on death row reflecting on his hanging for horrors he never committed, Demjanjuk came home to Cleveland, a free man. His citizenship was restored.
Though disgraced, OSI was not ready to throw in its hand. For it had been dealt a new card by its old comrades in the KGB.
The new evidence was a signed statement by one "Danilchenko," who claimed to have been a guard at Sobibor and had worked with Demjanjuk. As this document would have blown up the Treblinka case in Jerusalem, OSI had withheld it from the defense.
Another document turned up suggesting that Demjanjuk had indeed, after training at Trawniki camp, been assigned to Sobibor.
When the defense asked to interrogate "Danilchenko," to verify he had made and signed the statement and to question him on details, they were told this was not possible. Seems Danilchenko had died after signing.
So, after the first 13 years of his ordeal took him right up to a gallows in Jerusalem, Demjanjuk has now been pursued for another 17 years by an OSI that will not rest until he has been convicted, somewhere, of genocide.
And so we come to today.
Demjanjuk is to be taken to Germany and prosecuted as an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews at Sobibor -- though not one living person can place him at that camp and not even the German prosecutor will say that he ever hurt anyone. One witness in Israel, who was at Sobibor and says he knew all the camp guards, says he never saw Demjanjuk there.
If Friday's ruling is upheld, John Demjanjuk, who has been charged with no crime on German soil, is to be taken to Germany, home of the Third Reich, to be tried by Germans for his alleged role in a genocide planned and perpetrated by Germans. He is to serve as the sacrificial lamb whose blood washes away the stain of Germany's sins.
But if Germans wish to prosecute participants in the Holocaust, why not round up some old big-time Nazis, instead of a Ukrainian POW.
Answer: They cannot. Because the Germans voted an amnesty for themselves in 1969. So now they must find a Slav soldier they captured -- and Heinrich Himmler's SS conscripted and made a camp guard, if he ever was a camp guard -- to punish in expiation for Germany's sins.
The spirit behind this un-American persecution has never been that of justice tempered by mercy. It is the same satanic brew of hate and revenge that drove another innocent Man up Calvary that first Good Friday 2,000 years ago.
So I am curious as to why PB would step into this again. He surely can't get anything for it except the kind of press that will reinforce his image as an antisemitic.
I am no Buchananite but respect him for sounding off on what he feels is an injustice. He can't gain any personal or political benefit out of this by speaking out. I think he is acting out of sincere belief in this man's innocence. Given the climate of hate and fear going around today, I think this is an act of courage and nobility on PB's part.
I know many sincere and honest FReepers will disagree with this assessment...but that's how it looks to me at first glance.
It’s an obsession isn’t it, anti-illegal immigration Pat spending decades advocating for illegals, as long as they were Nazis. As Pat acknowledges, 30 years of this fiasco is the result of Demjanjuk’s use of the legal system. Interesting, not of word of Holocaust denier Buchanan’s assertation that gas doesn’t kill Jews.
Please elaborate on what you are saying. Surely you do not mean the “technicality” for which his conviction was overturned was that he was not the person for whose crimes he had been sentenced to death? What conviction and what technicality are you talking about? Are are you saying that he was Ivan of Treblinka or the guard at Sobibor? Or both, or what?
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Yeah, Pat. Nazis and Christ are comparable.
Buchanan is despicable.
See the link in the post after, the technicality was both a different name (one he actually used on other occasions) also that he was stationed at two different camps, something not brought up in the trial.. This is why Israel didn’t acquit, just overturn the punishment and make a statement he could be retried. He was never acquitted on the charges, at that, under Israeli law, he is still considered guilty by conviction, only the punishment was overturned.
This “background” article is written by a man who organized a protest in front of Demjanjuk’s house. Hardly an objective source.
That will be the problem with this case - emotion, politics, and the corruption of the US Justice Department make difficult to know the truth.
Although, I will admit that Buchanan is a bit of a kook. So I don’t believe him, either.
Is there any such thing as an ‘objective source’ in a case like this? It is pretty obvious by Buchanan’s comparing the guy to Jesus that he sure isn’t objective. I do find it curious why this is being made an indictment of the US Justice system when it was Israeli’s courts who found him guilty and is where he is being retried. The most we did was honor an extradition treaty... considering he was in the country illegally due to lying on his entry visa; you do want illegals deported don’t you?
That article completely misrepresents the case for it’s own twisted agenda.
No, and therein lies the problem. Jews, Germans, the Justice Department and Pat Buchanan all have strong vested interests in a case like this that will inevitably cloud any objective truth or justice.
“Apparently the new documentation being uncovered in the big Austria library (including photographic evidence) places him there . . .”
If this is so, does it not become exculpatory evidence for the charge he now faces ? Is he not being accused of being two different people ? The logic here seems to be he’s either Ivan the terrible from Treblinka or a guard from Sobibor - we’re not sure which - but we’re sure he’s one or the other.
Pat is wrong about one thing. This didn’t start in 79. I grew up in Cleveland. I remember this controversy starting well before that with demonstrations outside his house of people demand his execution.
The evidence against Demjanjuk has always been weak. The war has long been over, and as Pat points out - Germans have been given blanket amnesty. The idea that Demjanjuk can be “proven” to have been a sadistic guard in a Nazi death camp 65 years ago is absurd on its face.
It’s long past time to let this go.
And there’s copious evidence that Demjanjuk, as a red army prisoner, volunteered for the SS, serving at Trawniki, Majdanek Sobibor, Flossenberg and probably Treblinka. Some witness testimony, some of them now dead, some documentary. Yes, some from the Soviets which Pat will claim as unreliable, some from Nazi records and SS members which are, of course unrealiable, some from Jewish survivors, who Pat dismisses as mentally ill, thus always unreliable. Whether he’ll even be tried in Germany we’ll see, his age may be an issue, but it’s their call. Spain wants him too.
Amongst the questions Pat never answers, if diesel fumes can’t kill Jews, what happened to the Christians? The technique was first used on political prisoners and Polish POWs. . Flossenberg, half the dead were political prisoners, amongst them allied agents and the plotters against Hitler. Had it coming, I guess. In general I’m not a big Wikipedia fan, but their page on Demjanjuk is pretty good.
Next week, Pat will whine about the Nazi being deported to Serbia.
Another dissenting point of view: Demjanjuk: Examining his human rights violations
Watch out Valpal1, that crap will rot your brain.
Curiosity only, what do you think happened to all those Jews? How about Christians, none of them killed either?
"The main issue of the indictment sheet filed against the appellant was his identification as Ivan the Terrible, an operator of the gas chambers in the extermination camp at Treblinka. . . By virtue of this gnawing [new evidence indicating mistaken identity] . . . we restrained ourselves from convicting the appellant of the horrors of Treblinka. Ivan Demjanjuk has been acquitted by us, because of doubt, of the terrible charges attributed to Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka. This was the proper course for judges who cannot examine the heart and mind, but have only what their eyes see and read."
I also think that Yorem Sheftel is not a holacaust denier and that he had access to most if not all the documentation as the Israeli defense lawyer and lays out a pretty clear picture of prosecutorial misconduct and OSI misconduct. It doesn't help that the OSI attorney Neal Sher was later disbarred for embezzling from the Holacaust Fund. It's pretty obvious that the OSI had a vested interest in order to justify their continued existence and funding.
If we use the Shoah to excuse and rationalize injustice and misconduct against alleged participants then we guarantee that it will happen again.
Of course as you well know, none of this is relevant to the actions of the US courts. Demjanjuk clearly lied when entering the country, lied in obtaining his citizenship and quite properly was stripped of his citizenship and ordered deported. That’s injustice and misconduct to you because you obviously hold the US legal system in contempt.
And I never stated that Yorem Sheftel was a Holocaust denier, I stated that the sources you use to make your “point” are prominent Holocaust denial sites.
BTW, I hope it continues to happen here, illegals should be deported.
Now get back to your historical revisionism, sorry, review.
BTW, I am not defending Pat Buchannon. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. And he is a stopped clock, it’s very strange and sad to a man that had such skills go round the twist and bury himself in an irrational obssession. I always wondered if there was some unknown brain disease that accounted for his inability to use reason and logic in regards to Israel. Always thought that was weird.
I was unware of the “denier” status of the two documents I pulled up, but it actually serves to make my point better. Doing injustice to preserve the memory of a greater injustice is an abomination to the idea of Justice itself. And it feeds the fringe and gives them cover.
You realize don't you, that I quoted and highlighted the words of the Israeli Supreme Court themselves. It was an acquittal based on doubt. "We acquit" means he was acquitted.
The other poster was claiming that he was not acquitted but that his sentenced was overturned. That is a lie. He was acquitted and they chose not to retry on other charges because various legal misconduct had hopelessly tainted the case.
Committing injustice and misonduct in order to serve Justice is anathema. It is a common problem in many countries, including the US. Prosecutorial and police misconduct is legion and yes, brings contempt upon the Justice system and those who do it are not to be admired or supported.
No, it doesn’t make you point at all. He deserves to be stripped of his citizenship and deported. Beyond that is up to Germany or Spain. There’s no injustice here at all. Had you not used Holocaust Denial sites and instead used sources like the Israeli Goverment or even Wikipedia, that he lied on entering this country and obtaining citizenship would be obvious .
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