[W.Z. Although the author appears to rise to the defense of John Demjanjuk in this article, the reader will note that John Rosenthal takes the opportunity to chastise German authorities for being too lenient with "Nazi war criminals" living in Germany and calls for their persecution/prosecution. He thus embeds into the public conscience the presence of thousands and thousands of Nazi war criminals living in our midst. As Marshall McLuhan stated many years ago: "The medium is the message".

The reader will also note that Mr. Rosenthal does not call for the prosecution of American, British, Jewish war criminals from the WWII era, nor American and Israeli war crimes and criminals from the modern era. Nor does he call for the prosecution of the rogue elements within the OSI for prosecutorial misconduct in the denaturalization of John Demjanjuk in 1981 and his extradition to Israel in 1986.]

“The smallest of the small fish.” This is how the Dutch law professor Christian F. Rüter has described John Demjanjuk and his role in the Nazi death camp system. Rüter is the co-editor of the projected 50 volume Justiz und NS-Verbrechen or “Nazi Crimes on Trial,” a comprehensive collection of trial judgments handed down by German courts in Nazi capital crimes cases. Once upon a time, it was thought that Demjanjuk, born Ivan Demjanjuk in Ukraine, was “Ivan the Terrible,” a particularly sadistic Ukrainian guard at Treblinka. Israel even tried and convicted Demjanjuk for the crimes of Ivan. And then released him five years later after evidence emerged that Demjanjuk had been a victim of mistaken identity: he was not that Ivan, after all. “Nobody would pay any attention to Demjanjuk,” Rüter told the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) , “If the rumor had not stuck to him that he was ‘Ivan the Terrible’ — which he demonstrably is not.”

Even the very description of Demjanjuk as a suspected “Nazi war criminal” is misleading — to say nothing of the wildly exaggerated ranking of him as the “number one” Nazi war crime suspect. In the sense that every cog in the machinery of the Nazi camp system was somehow involved, Demjanjuk may well have been involved in Nazi war crimes. Based solely upon the evidence of an identity card whose authenticity has long been contested, German investigators claim that he served as a guard at the Sobibor extermination camp. But even if this should be true, Demjanjuk was not a Nazi, much less an SS man, as is commonly suggested. Demjanjuk was in fact himself a Red Army soldier who was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1942 and interred at a Soviet POW camp at Chelm in occupied Poland. If Demjanjuk served the Germans at all, he did so as a so-called SS “Hilfswilliger,” which is to say, a “volunteer helper” of the SS.

Moreover, the “voluntary” character of these “volunteers” must be regarded as a highly relative matter. The brutality displayed by the Germans to Soviet prisoners of war is legendary. In keeping with the Nazi disdain for Slavs — or Slavic “sub-humans,” as the Nazis labeled them — captured Red Army soldiers were notoriously permitted to starve to death. It is estimated that over half of the Soviet soldiers captured by the Germans died in captivity. According to Friedrich Schmidt writing in the FAZ, investigators “are convinced that Demjanjuk offered his services as a so-called volunteer helper in order to save himself from starvation.” Indeed, the very fact that Demjanjuk is alive is regarded as proof of the falsity of his claim that he remained a simple POW, since “the conditions at Chelm suggest that he could not have survived there for so long.”

[W.Z. Having completed his perfunctory defense of John Demjanjuk with the implication that he probably really was a German collaborator, Mr. Rosenthal turns to the real purpose of his article.]

So why does Germany appear intent on trying Demjanjuk of all people? Why try a foreigner who was conscripted into service by the Germans under desperate circumstances and who is alleged to have participated in crimes that occurred on foreign soil? (Or do German prosecutors believe that the German occupation of Poland was legitimate and that the German so-called “Generalgouvernement” over Polish territory is still in place?) Germany’s pursuit of Demjanjuk creates the impression that Germany is extraordinarily thorough about prosecuting Nazi war crimes. And this indeed must be the point of the exercise — because the reality could hardly be more different.

Since the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the German courts and the German legislature have displayed incredible indulgence toward Nazi war criminals, transforming the territory of the Federal Republic (i.e., from 1949-1990 “West Germany”) into a more or less safe haven for them. The Nazis in question are, however, Germans and hence real Nazis and not merely imaginary ones like John Demjanjuk.

As Christian Rüter has pointed out, it has in fact been the express policy of the German authorities responsible for the prosecution of Nazi crimes to refrain as a rule from bringing charges against “small takers-of-orders”: “like, for instance, members of firing squads [Erschießungskommandos].” The latter specification is included in a 1959 judgment of the District Court of Bielefeld. It should be underscored that it refers, of course, to Germans — i.e., persons who were unquestionably above the likes of John Demjanjuk in the command hierarchy and whose direct participation in murder is known. Millions of Jews and Soviet communist officials were killed by such “firing squads” on the Eastern Front: most notably, by the infamous SS Einsatzgruppen.

[W.Z. Millions more Ukrainians were killed by both the Germans and the Communists totalling some 9 million during WWII.]

In 1968, the Bundestag got in on the act, including an inconspicuous paragraph in an inconspicuous law that amounted, in effect, to a general amnesty for all mere “accessories” to Nazi crimes. (For the details, see my earlier article on the Demjanjuk case here.) Only suspects whose special culpability was established by “particular personal characteristics” were to be excluded from the dispositions in question. Even supposing that it is legitimate for Germany to claim jurisdiction in his case, it is completely obvious that Demjanjuk — the “smallest of the small fishes” — should benefit from these dispositions. That German prosecutors are preparing charges against him anyway is perhaps the clearest indication that the purpose of the proceedings is not justice, but to put on a show trial for foreign consumption. The temptation to exploit Demjanjuk’s accidental notoriety in order to create a myth of German vigilance appears to have been too powerful to resist.

Moreover, even larger fishes in the Nazi order, including such as bore direct responsibility in implementing the Nazis’ genocidal “Jewish policy,” have avoided prosecution. (On the example of Hans Gmelin, see my earlier discussion here. Gmelin was the father of Herta Däubler-Gmelin, the former German minister of justice who famously compared George Bush to Adolf Hitler.) The 1968 “backdoor amnesty” in fact specifically benefited the bureaucratic planners of the Holocaust in the so-called Reich Main Security Office (RSHA). Other larger fishes were brought to trial, but got off with mindbogglingly light sentences or were acquitted. The SS officer Joseph Oberhauser, for example, was in charge of all the foreign “volunteer helpers” at Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. In 1965, the Munich District Court found him guilty of complicity in the murder of some 300,000 persons. His sentence? Four years and six months in prison. As the German legal historian Ingo Müller has observed, this works out to a total of 7.8 minutes for each of his victims. All eight of Oberhauser’s codefendants — every one of them an SS officer — were acquitted.

According to an article on the English site of the German magazine Der Spiegel, German authorities already have their “sights” on four other suspected “Nazi war criminals” who immigrated to the United States. Three of them are former foreign “volunteers” and the other is an Austrian who has already been deported to his country of origin. Der Spiegel notes that it has been “difficult” to prosecute the foreign auxiliaries to Nazi crimes. But German authorities really do not have to look so far afield or go to so much trouble if they want to prosecute Nazi war criminals. Although their number, of course, diminishes from year to year, many homegrown and authentic Nazi war criminals are living in Germany. Both their crimes and their places of residence are known. Below is a list of seven Nazi war criminals, for example, that German prosecutors can indict right away. Their places of residence are given in parentheses.

Karl Gropler (Wollin)

Georg Rauch (Rümmingen)

Gerhard Sommer (Hamburg)

Alfred Mathias Concina (Freiberg)

Werner Bruss (Reinbek bei Hamburg)

Heinrich Schendel (Ortenberg)

Ludwig Göring (Karlsbad)

The seven men were members of the Waffen SS “Reichsführer” division that slaughtered some 560 Italian civilians in the infamous massacre of Sant’Anna di Stazzema in August 1944. Some 80% of the victims were women, children, and elderly persons. In June 2005, an Italian court found the seven men guilty of murder for their roles in the massacre. They have never faced punishment, however, because Germany refuses to extradite them. Three convicted co-defendants are reported to have died in the meanwhile. Germany likewise refuses to extradite many other convicted participants in SS massacres on foreign soil. Like countless Nazi war criminals before them, Gropler, Rauch, Sommer, Concina, Bruss, Schendel, and Göring are living out their lives in comfortable retirement in Germany.

[W.Z. Normally, I do not archive comments. However, I thought it would be instructive to include the exchanges between an agent provocateur called "miamaman" (whom "RW" accuses of "OSI internship") and several better informed respondents. The discussion ranged to include Soviet war crimes, the criminality of the OSI, George Soros, etc., but did not demand war crimes charges against Americans or Israelis for more recent events in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Palestine.]

42 Comments:

The real reason for all this? Cowardice.

Harmless people are hounded no end simply because they are harmless.

Harmful people are given the widest possible berth.

The United States hounds Demjanjuk on the basis of what may well be forged information and, yet, George Soros brags that he put stuffed Jews and Gypsies into cattle cars going to Auschwitz and nothing is done. Must be nice to be rich

The German Army Infantry school, in Hammelburg has two quiet courtyards, surrounded by stone walls and (as they were in 83′) covered in grass. One contains the mass grave of thousands of Czech POW’s, the other, the mass grave of thousands of Russian POW’s. Both have small brass plaques as “Denkmals” (”Memorials”). Those of you who watched “Hogans Heroes” during the 60’s remember “Hammelburg” being mentioned often, it (and Dresden) had the highest percentages of POW camps in Germany proper. To volunteer to be a “Hiwi” was a chance to improve ones chances of survival and (for the Ukrainians and other ethnic minorities) a chance to get back at the earlier oppressors, the Soviets. In Bad Toelz (again during the early 80’s) a good percentage of the civilian employees at Flint Kaserne were Russian and Ukrainian “Refugees” from the war (at least 5 of them were “Hiwis” or Vlasov Soldiers), the others? A good percentage of them were former SS (”we were the Fire Brigade”) and (of course) none of them fought against the Americans, all of them fought only the Russians . . . ?) The writer names 7 former SS that participated in a mass killing in Italy, maybe a better question about them is why are the Italians not requesting their extradition?

Is there any real documentation of Soros’ betrayal other than rumor and innuendo? I would hope the story is not true (in spite of my opposition to his efforts), but if it is . . . ideology makes for strange bedfellows.

Many Ukranians jumped at the chance to get back at the Russians. They had good reason. Stalin’s and Soviet war crimes and crimes against humanity barely get mentioned and mostly go unpunished, as well. Both the the Germans and Russians protect and cover up some horrendous crimes and criminals. This tragedy apparently will never end and, daily, threatens to happen again.

The Germans should have cleaned their own stables decades ago. Then they might have the right to persecute an octogenarian who was problably nothing but the lowest ranking forced labourer in their WW2 death machinery.

Shame on the Germans, now again and for ever.

OT: Germans are finally admitting that their reluctance to take Uyghurs in Guantanamo has to do with unwillingness to upset the Chinese. Apparently, the fate of those poor innocent detainees weighs less in the equation than German-Chinese trade relations.

If he is not Ivan the Terrible he should not be prosecuted. I remember many years ago after being taken to Israel it was disproved. Have they found new evidence that he was this brutal guard? If so he should be prosecuted if not he is a victim of the new Jewish religion holocaustism.Justice is paramount but if he isn’t Ivan the Terrible they should go after the ones who are the real danger like the ones who were captured yesterday. It’s funny how the ones who claim to represent Judaism show great bravado going after the real and imaginary remnants of the Nazis yet mollify and appease Islamic fanatics at every chance.

I was in Cleveland when Demjanjuk was first ‘discovered’.. he is a harmless old man trying to survive another year of a miserable life.. Soros is far guiltier than Demjanjuk of making Jews suffer and making the Nazis’ jobs easier.

TRY GEORGE SOROS. arrest him, charge him, try him. He has admitted his crimes. He might have been only 14, but he darn sure knew what he was doing, and practically brags about it now.

To # 4 and # 6:

Shame on you

Again, I ask the same question…So, tell me Mr. Rosenthal, should or shouldn’t Demjanjuk be put on trial?

All the excuses in the world, whether this or that other, more responsible, person, was never brought to trial brings us to the fact that life is not fair and each case should be tried on its own merits. But we should not go to the length of dismissing a guilty person because of that.

Now, it is obvious that Ivan Demjanjuk was not Ivan the Terrible from Treblinka, and that was Israel Perosecutor’s mistake, rightly corrected by Israel Supreme Court 5 years later.

No, the question is whether he was a Sobibor guard, which Demjanjuk emphatically denies. Why deny that? Ukrainian Sobibor guard Danilchenko, now deceased, twice stated Demjanjuk was not only a guard, but a purposeful one who drove the Jews into the gas chambers. Moreover, why he mentioned the little town of Sobibor (a few houses only)in Poland, as a placed he lived once when he entered the US if he is from the Ukraine? Finally, there is the incriminating SS card that identifies him with his photo as a Trawniki man and places him in SOBIBOR.

I talked on the phone with one of the few survivors of the Sobibor revolt, 83-year-old Thomas Blatt, who was 15 then. He traveled from California to Munich and is now waiting to testify at the trial. He does not remember Demjanjuk (nor the face of his father after 60 years), there were over 120 Ukrainian guards. He does not care whether he goes to jail, but he believes there a lot that he can say that we yet do not know. Check this article from Der Spiegel on this subject:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,625824,00.html

#11 Lisa:

I read #4 and #6 twice after seeing your comment. What, exactly, did either one say that prompted you to judge them so harshly… and not say one word about the convicted criminal George Soros?

The Soviets supplied plenty of falsified evidence against Demjanuk and failed. That evidence was used by the US based OSI and they have determined to get their pound of flesh regardless of the truth. If you were rumored to sell shoelaces to a German concentration camp you are at risk.

Apparently, real Nazi war criminals are allowed to live in peace in Germany. That’s unforgivable.

And #11 Lisa, you should be ashamed of yourself. You are no different than these other people calling for blood. Anyone’s blood. But you are proud to align behind the endless hearsay to destroy this US citizen. It’s appalling what he’s been through.

Hope the Germans are exposed and shamed for their hypocrisy. This has nothing to do with justice.
When do we get trials for the Soviet crimes against humanity?

Demjanjuk is a 1933 Holodomor survivor- when the communists killed more in Ukraine than all the soldiers killed in WWI. Duranty started the coverup and now other leftists continue the effort - in this case by slandering the victims of Communist genocide as “nazis” - thus the spectacle in Spiegel of the absurd notion that the only remaining nazis are Ukes, Poles, or Balts.

Demjanjuk has never denied becoming a guard NEAR Sobibor but he has always denied being in ANY concentration camp. As a POW, there was a 50/50 chance he would die but as a volunteer, he could fight the communists who killed 100 million in the last century and survive.

Why did he “lie” to get into the US? It is because the “honest” Ukrainians were killed by the millions when the leftist Roosevelt (who partied with Duranty in 1933 when Roosevelt recognized the communists and Duranty got a Pulitzer for covering up the Holodomor) sent Ukrainian refugees back to Stalin and certain death.

http://cybercossack.com/?p=1267

May 21, 2009 - 4:57 pm

16. blackminorca: “Demjanjuk has never denied becoming a guard NEAR Sobibor but he has always denied being in ANY concentration camp.”

What are you saying? there was nothing to guard for a Trawniki man near Sobibor, a hamlet of a few houses. When his SS card states Sobibor, it is the death camp where 250,000 Jews and a few hundred Gypsies were murdered, and nothing else, either he was there or was not, not NEAR. Then why Danilchenko, a fellow Ukrainian who admitted being a guard at Sobibor placed him there?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,625824,00.html

2) 15. RW: It’s utterly ridiculous to pursue a man for decades and trump up new charges when the double jeopardy charges have already failed.

RW, double jeopardy applies to the same country, Israel and Germany are 2 different countries. Israel became greedy and made a mistake as this guy is not Ivan the Terrible from Treblinka. Is he Ivan Demjanjuk from Sobibor?

3) 13. Themistocles:

#11 Lisa: I read #4 and #6 twice after seeing your comment. What, exactly, did either one say that prompted you to judge them so harshly…

Why do you criticize Lisa? she was right on shaming both #4 and #6, who are trying to justify and unjustifiable crime. Check Thoma Blatt, there were a few Ukrainian guards that were not bad, but the majority were animals when they did not have to excel like that.

4) Again RW: And #11 Lisa, you should be ashamed of yourself. You are no different than these other people calling for blood. Anyone’s blood.

SHAME ON YOU! Tell that to Thomas Blatt, who saw when the Nazis at Sobibor took her 7-year-old sister Tzipora and her mother to the gas chamber the same day they arrived from Izsbica, and later saw his father die also at Sobibor.
http://www.amazon.com/Sobibor-Forgotten-Revolt-Survivors-Report/dp/0964944200/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242955921&sr=8-2

Those camps had pencils. Round up any pencil supplier! It’s the same garbage.

Meanwhile as Mr. Rosenthal has nobly pointed out, the real Nazis sit comfortably inside Germany while a peon is being used again (exactly how long has this witch hunt been underway now) to absolve the guilty Nazis and the real Soviet murderers with blood on their hands.

It’s an utter disgrace. And there are plenty here in the US who were a party to this injustice. The OSI has been cooking the books with falsified Soviet supplied evidence for years on this man.

Some people need to be in jail for that fiasco. Instead they’ve drummed up new charges against Demjanjuk over and over and over again. Where are the charges against these OSI people who framed this guy?

More dead witnesses and those far into their later years all ready to point the finger (again) and put this man on death row. What a disgrace. There is no justice in the US sadly except for the money men like Soros. He’s back to his ugly business of undermining this nation’s Constitution with his Manchurian Candidate ways.

Well now we see how the double jeopardy game is played. Just keep trying someone over and over and export them somewhere else until you get the required result.

And then reference someone who’s suffered a loss as your defense. Erect those straw men. Gee, that Obama disease is getting around nicely now isn’t it.

Oh you mean the guy that is trying to sell his book that bashes Demjanjuk for being a Nazi guard… but then he failed to ID Demjanjuk from a line up?

So now his excuse is that “It was such a long time ago and I dont even remember what my parents looked like”. He was 15 when he was in the camp - how could he forget what his parents looked like! How could he forget what the murderer of 29000 looked like when his book describes in great detail his every day at the camp.

Demjanjuk was a guard - of an assortment of fields and forests that were a distance away from the camp. This was WWII when sentrys were posted everywhere.

And who do you mean with “the Germans”? The Jewish community? The ones that spend their whole life finding evidences to bring those Nazis to the court (like the famous prosecutor Fritz Bauer) or the ones that have always tried to silence those voices from the past?

Everyone with the slightest sense for history knows that in the past 60 years only two countries were continuously doing something profound to trial nazi-criminals: In the first place Israel - followed by the Federal Republic of Germany. Not the USSR, not the USA, not France, not East-Germany.

BTW: “It´s easy to condemn Wernher von Braun after he has brought people to the moon”

In other words: You can’t ignore the historical context if you want to explain why some Nazis have been reintegrated into society. It was more than simple hypocrisy - that`s the legacy of the cold war and the fear of covering up unpleasant facts (like collaboration)

1) Blackie, I know Mr. Blatt, and talk to him on the telephone, he ain’t trying to put together any book on this. Check your sources. There has never been a line up either. You are making stuff up.

“Demjanjuk was a guard - of an assortment of fields and forests that were a distance away from the camp. This was WWII when sentrys were posted everywhere.”

Really, check your history sir…there was nothing to guard around Sobibor at that time, but Sobibor itself.

20. Mary:

Who is going to prosecute the Jews complicit in the Judenrat?

2) I don’t know, I don’t think this trial has anything to do with the different Judenrats…do you? Let each trial stand on its own merits. Were crimes committed involving the Judenrats? Yes, more than likely, but…May be you want to write a book on the subject.

18. RW: “Double jeopardy as a concept is applicable no matter how many countries one drums up to pursue “new charges.”

No, my friend, come on, the American court decided Demjanjuk was extraditable to 3 countries: Germany, Poland, and/or Ukraine. Germany claimed the privilege. Notice that neither of these 3 countries is Israel, so double jeopardy is out of the question.

Finally, RW, your last statement:

“Gee, that Obama disease is getting around nicely now isn’t it.”

Pal, first, for your information:
a) I ain’t Jew. I am just a student of “Aktion Reinhard”, the operation under SS Gruppenfuhrer Odilo Globocnik, including Sobibor, am in contact with expert Michael Tregenza in Lublin, retired Scotland Yard inspector O’Neil in England, and then Mr. Blatt. That’s it.
b) I am a full-blooded conservative and voted for McCain (least than 2 “weavels”) and oppose almost all Obama’s policies…

So, what Obama has to do with this trial?

1) You can call me Black Minorca Pullets.

2) You must know a different Mr Blatt or you have aquired Sobibor’s Blatt’s affinity for lies as he most certainly is selling a book slandering Mr Demjanjuk - though he failed to identify him in a photo line up.

You read how Blatt admitted that he could not ID Demjanjuk - well that is not what he says in his book:

“The Ukrainian collaborators also went into hiding after the war. Only a few were ever caught…One of them named Ivan Demjanjuk was a guard in Sobibor…”

http://sobibor.info/murderers.html

Unbelievably, to cover up this missive, Blatt concocted the lie that neither could he remember his parents - though he recalls in great detail in the book the day he arrived at the age of 15 at the camp with his parents.

3) Nothing in Sobibor to guard besides the camp? You should have google mapped Sobibor and see that it is on the Bug River which is the border of Poland, Russia and Ukraine. This is a MAIN invasion route for centuries - even Napolean invaded this area.

Here is a battle map from 1939 - it is VERY obvious that the Nazis would post sentrys on the border of Poland and Russia.

http://felsztyn.tripod.com/id19.html

You will note that the center of the invasion is Lublin and Sobibor is just due east in a forested area that would provide cover for any attack.

Demjanjuk’s claim that he guarded this frontier just prior to another Russian invasion is not only plausible but to be expected.

This witch hunt should have ended years ago with the prosecution of OSI officials who eagerly partook of the falsified evidence to take out Ivan the Terrible who they expressed with 100% certainty was John Demjanjuk.
This garbage has been going on for years. There were plenty of witnesses claiming it was fact and now we have the same people on the endless witch hunt saying, we are 100% certain we have it correct now.

It’s utter b.s.

Even if the guy was a guard, there’s no evidence to suggest he had a hand in doing anything other than guarding a fence. And guarding a fence sure beat being starved to death as was done to many others in similar circumstances.

So pal, being a jew has nothing to do with it. It has to do with American justice. John Demjanjuk as an American citizen had his rights trampled on by people just like you that conclude his guilt based on one supposition. Now it’s that he was a guard somewhere else. More of the same pal. You and your OSI friends will be facing a nice day in hell soon for your eagerness to have this man’s blood.

Keep studying pal. You are likely to find new ways to justify the ends. If that’s what they call education today, spare me your pious diatribes and ugly racism. The only one saying anything about being a jew was you.

That Mr. Rosenthal pointed out how many true Nazis are available for prosecution that will never happen is more telling than anything posted by MiamiMan.

Last, I ain’t your pal buddy.

Hey Pally RW, thanks for the diatribe, keep studying Pal.

Blackie, sure you know more than me, you really “pullets” my leg. Napolean did it alright.

Demjanjuk was born in the Kiev region of Ukraine. Fully 25% of the people in this district died in the Stalinist famine in the early 30’s - when Demjanjuk was about 13. The Soviet Union was not a signatory to international conventions concerning the treatment of POWs. German POWs and Soviet POWs suffered slave labor conditions as a result and many died of starvation and abuse. Many Ukrainians viewed the Nazis as liberators for historically understandable reasons.

When the war ended all Soviet prisoners who survived were viewed as traitors and sent to slave labor camps in the Gulag, where most died. Many people lied to the immigration authorities to avoid the fate of those who were repatriated.

Now how many Holocaust survivors have been tried and punished for collaborating with the Nazis when refusing to collaborate would have meant death?

I think some degree of collaboration is understandable in cases like Demjanjuk’s.

Maybe Demjanjuk deserves to die for his crimes. (None of US know enough to say.) Maybe he can get a fair trial in Germany. I doubt it but I hope I am wrong.

Why is all this energy spent on chasing after a man who probably played a very small role in a huge crime and was probably to some degree a victim himself? Beats me.

All these hysterical rants by crazy Ukranian nationalists and their supporters that Demjanjuk was resentful of the Soviets does not even agree with what Demjanjuk has said.

Bitter Ukraninians, Poles, Balts, etc. - stop revising history. Stop glorifying Nazi Germany and its collaborators

Fine! But some might be interested in the facts:
Even in Germany you can’t open up a trial without evidences and I don’t think an US-Court would agree to Demjanjuk's extradition just for fun.

The truth is that you can’t separate this new process from the 1993 trial in Israel. It was the Israeli prosecutor Mr. Shaked who has found some new evidences in Russia and Germany during his researches which he couldn’t use in his process. Ok, Demjanjuk isn’t “Ivan the terrible” (which was Ivan Marchenko) but that doesn’t mean that he’s innocent. Let’s find it out!

PS: Mr. Rosenthal, writing the names and residence of alleged Nazi-Criminals correctly isn’t enough to open up a trial – you need evidences! Believe it or not - those guys have lawyers. If you have something in your hands to trail them just go ahead! But don’t think you are the first who got this idea

OSI were manipulated by the Isrealis who wanted him.

The OSI were too keen and the Isrealis too willing to manipulate.
The bigger issue should be the naming and shaming of those (living & dead) who knowingly allowed active and ethusiastic participants of the Holocaust genocide to either escape through the ratlines (with the help of the vatican & american intelligence agents)to South American and those who help others to move (with their families)to take jobs in American industry and science or else become part of the US intelligence industry.

They were treated as if their crimes were of no consequence and as if the US didn’t care about the victims.

These are also criminals who aided and abetted the NAZI’s and disappeared into American suburban respectibility.
In Europe they would be called collaborators.

Who were they? It’s time their families also suffered the shame of having NAZI collaborators in their midst. Perhaps their graves should be marked accordingly and their name recorded in histories of the time.

After all - they should not be allowed the defence of just following orders.

[email protected]
“They are destroying the image of the USA being a just and honest society.”

I always find such assertions amusing (esp considering my comment above). Oh how Nationalism blinds!

The perhaps greatest damage to the US reputation in the world in all the 20th Century was to its claim to be a “just & honest society” - the “great democracy”.

Joseph McCarthy demonstrated that America was as capable as the Soviets, Chinese and Vietnamese at holding “Show trials”, at blacklisting people who thought differently, at destroying their jobs and employment propects, of ostracising them from society, putting innocent people under big-brother state surveilance, creating “files” on them in a system with the beuraucratic efficiency and idelogical malice of a Bera or stasi.

Since then people who remember their history are skeptical about claims of “just and honest society”

And just when it looked like people forgot that ol’ drunk McCarthy, along came the impeachment trials - trials championed by people who have since confessed to have been committing adultery at the time they were giving morality-laced sound-bytes to the American electors.

I guess if you write a few more books and get your talking head on Fox often enough you can wash out that damned spot of hypocracy and deceipt.

It also helps to smile and smile!

Jessie: Demjanjuk may well be lying. For that matter, he may be far guiltier than any of us imagines. That does not mean he will get a fair trial. That does not explain the disproportionate attention given to his case.

Those who would have us remember the Holocaust do not bolster their case by minimizing what others suffered in the 20th century, specifically, what the Ukrainians, the Poles, the Bielorussians, the Ruthenians, the Lithuanians, the Latvians, the Estonians, the Volga Germans and the Crimean Tatars (among others), suffered at the hands of the Bolshevik regime over 70 years. That many of these people initially collaborated with the Nazis is perfectly understandable. What is not understandable is that for every nut-case Holocaust denier there are a hundred “respectable” people who deny, minimize or excuse the crimes of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and those who worked with them or for them.

For that matter, let us remember Joseph McCarthy and the fact that his own political party pulled the plug on him in short order and he died in disgrace.

Has anyone in the OSI been tried and imprisoned for trying to use falsified evidence to kill someone? Using Soviet supplied evidence they knew was fake to have a man killed. Listen to the howls for blood. They are insatiable.

Had not heard about the report on the witch hunt in Canada but that’s simply amazing. If you want a Nazi, there are plenty as Mr. Rosenthal has demonstrated. If you want some blood from a high profile guy, why not Soros. He’s so cheerily happy to recount his efforts in sending people to their deaths.

But nothing but crickets. And support for the evil work of the OSI.

Most people would disagree with that statement. In fact, the Israelis believed the evidence they were given had met the burden of proof of the USA judicial system and only for this reason they were eager to try him. Clearly as some point during the trial, the Israelis came to realize that John was being framed by the OSI which had used questionable Soviet evidence. To their everlasting honor and credit, the Israeli Supreme Court in a unanomous statement statement agreed to free John because they had come to realize that the evidence he had been given was not authentic. If the Israelis thought that John was responsible for the death of even one Jew anywhere in the world, they would have demanded that he be retried in Israel. The Israelis however have come to understand what everyone else around the world knows: the OSI is managed by a bunch of corrupt American Jews who are desperate to keep the Holocaust in the news so that they can keep their well paying jobs. If the Jewish managed OSI needs to frame someone - so be it - they get to keep their jobs. These OSI employees would never get jobs again that pay so much for such incompetence.

“Joseph McCarthy demonstrated that America was as capable as the Soviets, Chinese and Vietnamese at holding “Show trials”, at blacklisting people who thought differently,”

Senator McCarthy has been proven more right than wrong. You might be confusing Senator McCarthy with the bi-partisan House committee on Un-American activities.

Show trials? what show trials? I do not recall reading about summary punishment by firing squads or sentencing to the Gulags.

RW, Blackie, and other revisionists…

Can we just concentrate on Mr. Ivan Demjanjuk, and leave all the peripheral BS, just for a second concentrate on the merits of this trial, if any, and the person in question.

1) Yes, he is not Ivan the Terrible from Treblinka. That was Israel’s mistake, which luckily their Supreme Court reversed.

2) He was definitely a Trawniki man, trained in that camp to help Nazis as concentration camp guards and similar function. His SS identification card has the Trawniki seal. This same card states he was posted to Sobibor, which was a strictly a death camp.

3) Ukrainian Sobibor guard Danilchenko, now deceased, left a written confession placing him not only as a guard in Sobibor, but as a willing executioner of Nazi’s orders. Why Danilchenko would do that?

4) When he emigrated to the US, he stated that one of the places he had lived at in Europe was: Sobibor. Why? He is from the Ukraine, Sobibor is a Hamlet of a few houses in Poland.

It is true that I admire Thomas Blatt, as well as deceased Sasha Peshersky, and still alive at over 90 Arkady Wajpaper, who lives in the Ukraine. Yes, I talk to Mr. Blatt on the phone, am a student of “Aktion Reinhard”, but I have nothing against John Demjanjuk, and I am not even sure what he did or didn’t. But to say let him go without a trial, no good, not for old, for you need to understand a little what the majority of the Trawniki men this in these camps before making a decision. There are many things we still don’t know that he, if he was there, can shed light on.

Your facts are incorret MiamiMan.

(1) The fact that he was proven not to be Ivan the Terrible is to Israel’s credit not mistake. Israel’s Supreme Court overturned a lower courts conviction citing new evidence which made it impossible for John Demjanjuk to be Ivan the Terrible.

(2) In fact, the Trawniki card was proven to be a forgery. The “hater” at the OSI were able to have innocent John deported to Israel based on “the good word” of the Soviet KGB that “the card was authentic”. Whenever the defense asked for it to be submitted into evidence in Israel, the Soviets refused to release it. Nonetheless, there were several documents experts who were able to prove that the Trawniki card was a fake hense why it remains to this day in Russian hands.

(3) The corrupt Jews running the OSI simply got a letter from their KGB friends which stated that a man who was a guard at Sobibor confessed to having seen Demjanjuk in that concentration camp. Danilchenko was never cross-examined by the defense or by the Israelis who were prosecuting Demjanjuk. How convenient ! That amounts to nothing more than hearsay, and given that the source was the KGB - you really have to be a nut case to accept it as fact.

(4) Demjanjuk did in fact state that he was imprisoned in the AREA of Sobibor (NOT the CONCENTRATION CAMP). For your information, there were 10’s of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war in that area who were conscripted into forced labor. He told US immigration of all the places he had worked in his declaration.

The hateful Jews running the OSI simply accepted from the Andropov era KGB an ID (Trawniki Card) which the Isralies found not to be credible and for this reason released John Demjanjuk. The corrupt OSI that was “sure” that John was Ivan the Terrible and sent him to the gallows, now claims that he was a guard at another camp. THERE IS NOT NEW EVIDENCE. The Germans have exactly what the Isralies had and for that reason the Israelies did not want to engage in “double jeopardy”. The corrupt American Jews managing the OSI were given a ‘carte blance’ to do just that and so they deported him to Germany this time. The OSI does not want him to get a fair trial because he will be found ‘not guilty’. They just want him to die in prison - that way they get to keep their American taxpayer jobs. Where else will these liars find employment ?

Re: 41. [email protected]:

OK Mark, no problems, answers:

1) So, Israel Supreme corrected the mistake from the lower court, that’s what I said, and Mr. Demjanjuk IS NOT Ivan the Terrible from Treblinka.

2) You are totally incorrect, the SS Card, which has a Trawniki seal on it, is not a forgery by the NKVD (not KGB, did not exist at that time). It is accepted as authentic by several experts.

[W.Z. There is overwhelming evidence that the Trawniki ID card 1393 purporting to be that of John Demjanjuk is not valid. In the 1987-88 Jerusalem Show Trial, Julius Grant testified   to this effect. No handwriting expert in the world has authenticated the green, iron-free signature which appears on the card. We do not know, as yet, by whom, how and when this card was manufactured.]

I think it was the ALIENS, not what you refer in your Anti-Semite bias “hateful Jews”, which you judge from your couch (potato couch). Many of these “hateful Jews” probably had families slaughterer during the Shoa.

Alas, no, it was Elvis the one one falsified that “KGB” card, ha, ha, ha!