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Will Zuzak; DEMANUK.026 = Response to Mark Kaufman; 1996-02-29
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Dear readers:
The Demjanjuk disinformation posted by Michael Kagalenko to
soc.culture.ukrainian on 18 FEB 1996, in his continuing attacks on
Larisa Streeter, finally reached my newsgroup server on 24 FEB 1996.
It consists of a 24 SEP 1995 posting to soc.culture.jewish by Mark Ira
Kaufman responding to my earlier posting
concerning the second anniversary of John Demjanjuk's return to his home
in Cleveland, Ohio:
[email protected] (Will Zuzak) writes...
wz> Remembrance:
wz> Two years ago today, 22 September 1993, John Demjanjuk was
wz> finally released from an Israeli jail and allowed to return home to
wz> Cleveland, Ohio after an 18 year ordeal.
wz>
wz> Sadly, the OSI personnel of the U.S. Department of Justice,
wz> who conspired to have an innocent man hanged for crimes that he did
wz> not commit, have still not been brought to justice.
I had not seen Mr. Kaufman's posting previously and feel obliged
to respond, since he still insists that Mr. Demjanjuk is guilty of war
crimes. For the sake of brevity, I will retain only the portions of the
material that I am critiquing. My comments are separated from the
original text either with asterisks or square brackets.
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> Ohio Congressman James Trafficant has been a vigorous Demjanjuk
>supporter since the start of the trial in Israel. After Demjanjuk was
>convicted of crimes against humanity, Trafficant [aided] the defense in
>obtaining previously unreleased documents from the Justice Department.
>The documents proved crucial to Demjanjuk's appeal.
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These documents were in the possession of the Office of Special
Investigations already in 1978 and were criminally concealed from the
courts and the defense during the 1981 denaturalization and 1986
extradition trials.
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> Demjanjuk's image as a victim of injustice was further enhanced
>by a 1993 ruling from the U. S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The
>court declared that during Demjanjuk's extradition the Justice
>Department's Office of Special Investigations improperly concealed the
>documents obtained by Trafficant. Some of the OSI documents suggested
>[Ivan Marchenko] was known as 'Ivan the Terrible' at the Treblinka
>death camp in Poland.
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Thus, the OSI knew that Mr. Demjanjuk could not possibly be
guilty of the crimes with which he had been charged. On this basis, the
Sixth Circuit Court ruled that the OSI had perpetrated "prosecutorial
misconduct constituting fraud on the court" in obtaining Mr. Demjanjuk's
denaturalization and extradition.
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> Demjanjuk insists he was in a POW camp in Chelm, Poland for the
>duration of the war. It was later shown that the camp did not exist at
>the Demjanjuk claims to have been there. Although Demjanjuk had
>changed his alibi numerous times, the Chelm story is the one he used
>most often. It was the one that he settled on during the closing
>arguments of his trial. To this day, it remains his claim.
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Mr. Demjanjuk claims that following his capture by the German
army in the early summer of 1942 in Crimea, he spent several weeks
fixing railway tracks for German transport, was transferred to Rovno,
Ukraine, was transferred to Chelm, Poland (where his most abiding memory
was digging peat moss), was transferred to the German interior with the
advent of the Red Army and was finally liberated by the Americans.
Historian Nikolai Tolstoy testified at the Jerusalem Show Trial
that Mr. Demjanjuk's story was reasonable and plausible under the
conditions of WW2. Other historians agree with his assessment.
[Furthermore, in a criminal trial the onous is on the
prosecution to prove their allegations, not on the defense to provide an
airtight alibi. Otherwise one is automatically guilty, unless one can
prove one's innocence.]
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> Jerome Brentar is a wealthy Cleveland travel agent who has
>transferred an estimated three million dollars to Demjanjuk. Much of
>this money, to cover legal fees and travel expenses, came out of
>Brentar's own pockets.
> Brentar has never doubted Demjanjuk's innocence. But Brentar's
>reason for believing in Demjanjuk is different than Nishnic's.
> Jerome Brentar is a Holocaust denier.
> Brentar has addressed conferences of the Institute for
>Historical Review. In his talks before the I.H.R., Brentar insisted
>that Demjanjuk was innocent because the crimes he was charged with are
>a fabrication created by the Jews.
> Jerome Brentar was born in Croatia and raised in Cleveland. In
>the early post-war years Brentar, who could speak fluent German,
>returned to Europe. There he screened thousands of refugees as an
>employee of the International Refugee Organization. Between 1948 and
>1950, Brentar and the late Dr. Edward O'Connor, an official with the
>Catholic Relief Services, worked together to secretly smuggle Nazis
>into the United States. In an interview published in the Philadelphia
>Inquirer, Brentar admitted helping hundreds of Nazis defraud their way
>into the United States. "Whether he was in the Waffen SS or the
>Wehrmacht...I would permit them to be considered..."
> Nishnic told the Cleveland Free Times, "It's obviously an
>attempt to discredit Mr. Demjanjuk by attacking those around him. I
>don't think any serious person accepts that Jerry Brentar is a Nazi
>sympathizer. In all the years I've known him, he has never tried to
>push Holocaust denial on me....I find it sadly humorous that people are
>making Mr. Brentar seem like a Nazi-smuggler."
> Edward O'Connor's son Mark would later become Demjanjuk's
>defense attorney.
> Brentar's pro-Nazi sympathies did not become public until
>Demjanjuk was already on trial in Israel. But news coverage of the
>case focused on the trial and Brentar's past stayed in the background.
> In 1994 Brentar unsuccessfully ran for congress. The one and
>only issue he discussed during the campaign was the Demjanjuk case.
>Brentar claims he is no longer wealthy, and has stopped financing
>Demjanjuk's campaign.
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I concur with Mr. Kaufman's assertion that the name of Jerome
Brentar has been strangely lacking in the Demjanjuk case, both in court
documents and the news media coverage. I know very little about Mr.
Brentar except that Edward Nishnic has always spoken respectfully and
positively about him in his attempts to procur information helpful to
Mr. Demjanjuk. I can neither confirm nor dispute Mr. Kaufman's
allegations except to question his use of inflammatory terminology
"secretly smuggle Nazis", "Nazis defraud", etc.
However, it is my understanding that Mr. Brentar's main
controversial thesis is his contention that after WW2 tens of thousands
of Jews were allowed to enter the United States illegally. These were
economic rather than political refugees who streamed from Soviet
occupied territory into the American zone in 1946, long after the war
was over. This could only have occurred with the collusion of highly
placed Soviet and American authorities. Furthermore, this occurred at
exactly the same time that hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavs, Russian
Cossacks and Ukrainians were being forcibly repatriated to the Soviet
Union.
It was this fear of forcible repatriation according to the
terms of the infamous Yalta Agreement which induced Mr. Demjanjuk to
falsely claim on his immigration papers that he had been born in Western
Ukraine (occupied by Poland between WW1 and WW2) rather than in Eastern
Ukraine.
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> One thing is certain. Demjanjuk worked for the SS as a guard in
>at least one death camp, and probably more than one. This was
>acknowledged by Demjanjuk's attorneys who, in a defensive move,
>established his Nazi past during the trial itself.
> Demjanjuk's Israeli attorney, Yoram Sheftel, introduced
>testimony by Ignat Danielchenko. Danielchenko was [allegedly] a guard
>at the Sobibor death camp. Danielchenko stated, "I saw Mr. Demjanjuk
>escorting prisoners in all phases, from the unloading of the trains to
>the entrance to the gas chamber."
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The Danilchenko protocols were among the exculpatory evidence
in the possession of the OSI in 1978 and criminally concealed from the
courts and the defense. These protocols contain statements which are
historically inaccurate and demonstratably false, thus bringing their
authenticity into question. None of this evidence could possibly be
accepted in a criminal court of law.
Far from proving Mr. Demjanjuk's presense in Sobibor, this
so-called evidence simply re-inforces the contention of the defense as
to the unreliability of all KGB-supplied evidence. Neither did Mr.
Sheftel ever suggest that Mr. Demjanjuk was ever in Sobibor.
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> ....[Marchenko material creates "doubt"]....
>
> A principle of law known as the doctrine of speciality prevents
>Israel from trying Demjanjuk for any crime other than the specific
>crime for which he was extradited.
>
> ....[Alan Dershowitz rantings deleted]....
>
> Although the court acquitted Demjanjuk, it did not declare him
>innocent. The acquittal stated that his Nazi service at Sobibor,
>Trawniki, Flossenberg and Regensberg. The court also reaffirmed its
>contention that based on the evidence and eyewitness testimony,
>Demjanjuk had served at Treblinka.
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In the above section, Mr. Kaufman discusses the "Marchenko"
evidence exonerating Mr. Demjanjuk as if it were newly revealed, whereas
much of it had been in the possession of the OSI in 1978.
He then provides the "official legal" reason for the failure of
the Israeli Supreme Court to prosecute Mr. Demjanjuk on other charges.
Be assured that the official reason has little to do with reality.
They could not hang Mr. Demjanjuk because by this time the whole
world was convinced that Mr. Demjanjuk had been deliberately framed and
that the real "Ivan of Treblinka" was Ivan Marchenko.
They could not prosecute Mr. Demjanjuk for other crimes because
there was no credible evidence to support such charges. Between July 29,
1993 when Mr. Demjanjuk was acquitted and Sept. 22, 1993 when he was
allowed to return home to Cleveland, Ohio, thousands of Nazi hunters a
la Simon Wiesenthal (including Professor Irwin Cotler and Kenneth Narvey
from Montreal) petitioned the Israeli courts to bring new charges
against Mr. Demjanjuk.
The Supreme Court eventually declined to press new charges,
stating that it would not be in Israel's interests to do so. Far from
convicting Mr. Demjanjuk, a new trial would have further revealed the
criminal shenanigans of the OSI and Israeli prosecution. They would
have had to concede that the Travniki ID card was a fake, (see
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/pakistan/83/demjanjuk/demanuk.002 ), which
the whole world now believes. A critical examination of the Danilchenko
protocols would have revealed all the inconsistancies in the evidence
therein. The innuendos concerning Flossenberg, Regensberg, etc. are just
innuendos with no basis in fact.
The Supreme Court of Israel did, indeed, go to great lengths to
vindicate the shameful conduct of judges Levine, Dorner and Tal of the
Lower Jerusalem Court which originally condemned Mr. Demjanjuk to death.
To paraphrase Yoram Sheftel, the Supreme Court verdict covers 405 pages,
with 214 pages of validation of the entire identification process, with
all its improprieties and only 13 pages dealing with the reasons for Mr.
Demjanjuk's acquittal. "This bizarre state of affairs will ensure that
every unbiased jurist who studies the verdict will treat it as a
ridiculous legal document, meant first and foremost to obscure a fact
that cannot be obscured - that Demjanjuk was clearly the innocent victim
of a show-trial." ('The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a
Show-Trial' (page 361), by Yoram Sheftel, Publ: Victor Gollancz, 1994
ISBN 0 575 05795 5)
Mr. Sheftel correctly states that, despite their acquittal of
Mr. Demjanjuk, the tone of their verdict places the five Supreme Court
judges on the same moral level as Levine, Dorner and Tal who presided
over the original show-trial which convicted Mr. Demjanjuk.
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> One month [10 months] before Demjanjuk was acquitted in Israel,
>the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals appointed U.S. District Judge
>Thomas Wiseman to investigate charges of misconduct by the O.S.I. [In
>his report of June 29, 1993,] Wiseman ruled the O.S.I. had played games
>with the evidence, but did not intentionally frame Demjanjuk. Wiseman
>also noted that because of Demjanjuk's Nazi SS service at Sobibor and
>his unbelievable alibis, concocted to hide all of his Nazi service,
>Demjanjuk's behavior contributed to his extradition. Wiseman wrote,
>"Mr. Demjanjuk's alibi was so incredible as to legitimately raise the
>suspicions of his prosecutors that he lied about everything."
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The Supreme Court of Isreal attempted to legitimize the
show-trial orchestrated by Levine, Dorner and Tal. Similarly, judge
Thomas Wiseman acts as an apologist for the OSI. Although he correctly
details all the prosecutorial misconduct and fraud on the court
perpetrated by the OSI in the Demjanjuk case, he goes to extraordinary
lengths to obfuscate their criminal culpability and minimize their evil
intentions.
Mr. Kaufman and other interested readers are invited to read my
rather lengthy (78kb) Critique of Wiseman's report archived at
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/pakistan/83/demjanjuk/demanuk.011
Therein, I demand that Judge Wiseman apologize to Mr. Demjanjuk for
suggesting that his alibi was a lie.
The tenth and final recommendation at the end of my Critique
reads as follows:
10. We recommend that the Sixth Circuit Court:
(a) reopen the Demjanjuk denaturalization case under criminal
rules of evidence with a view of restoring his American
citizenship.
(b) bring criminal charges of "prosecutorial misconduct" and
"obstruction of justice" against certain OSI personnel
(c) recommend to Congress and the Federal Administration that
the Office of Special Investigation be disbanded.
(d) recommend to Congress to draft new legislation capable of
handling all extraterritorial crimes (past, present and future)
perpetrated by citizens, residents or visitors to the United
States.
These recommendations are as valid today as when they were made
during the summer of 1993. The OSI has made a mockery of the concept of
American justice. The corruption amongst its personnel (particularly
Allan Ryan, Norman Moscowitz and Neil Sher) has been confirmed beyond
all doubt. It is incumbent upon all Americans to demand that these
people be brought to justice and that the rot be excised from within the
U.S. Department of Justice.
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> After Israel reversed his conviction, the 6th Circuit Appeals
>Court ordered Demjanjuk temporarily [?] readmitted to the country. The
>court declared that his presence was necessary to assist his attorneys
>prepare for a hearing on the O.S.I. matter. For reasons unknown, the
>court began and concluded the hearing a week before Demjanjuk returned
>to America.
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The reason for the Sixth Circuit Court's ruling was the (stupid)
statements of Attorney General Janet Reno, first that Mr. Demjanjuk
would not be allowed to return to the United States and then later that
he would be deported.
I, also, do not understand the reasons for the delay in
restoring Mr. Demjanjuk's American citizenship. After the strange death
of Judge Frank Battisti (who presided over the original corrupt
denaturalization and extradition trials) shortly after the Sixth Circuit
Court ruled that the OSI was guilty of "prosecutorial misconduct
constituting fraud on the court" at these trials, the Demjanjuk file was
handed over to Judge Krupansky. To my knowledge no action has yet been
taken.
To my mind, the most logical procedure for the courts to follow
is to simply annul the legality of all court decisions concerning Mr.
Demjanjuk which were tainted by OSI prosecutorial misconduct. Thus, the
denaturalization, deportation and extradition rulings would become null
and void. Mr. Demjanjuk's American citizenship would be automatically
restored.
Should the Justice Department feel strongly that criminal
charges against Mr. Demjanjuk are warranted, it should induce Congress
to pass appropriate legislation to allow criminal prosecution of all
alleged war criminals in U.S. courts (not the farcical civil proceedings
presently being utilized by the OSI). If Mr. Demjanjuk were convicted in
a criminal court case by a jury of 12 of his peers, then one could claim
that justice had been done.
However, I am confident that that would never happen, since
there is no credible evidence that Mr. Demjanjuk is guilty of any war
crimes whatsoever.
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Will Zuzak; DEMANUK.026 = Response to Mark Kaufman; 1996-02-29
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