The U.S. Justice Department may indeed get their man this time even if justice is tossed out the window. Retired auto worker John Demjanjuk has been deported to Germany where he will be charged — this time — with complicity in Nazi crimes at Poland’s Sobibor concentration camp. Why emphasize “this time”?  Well, the now 89-year-old Ohioan was put through several legal wringers beginning 30 years ago because he was supposed to be “Ivan the Terrible,” the sadistic prison guard from Treblinka, a completely different camp.  Turns out he wasn’t Ivan after all.

U.S. officials got their evidence that Demjanjuk was Treblinka’s Ivan from the Soviet KGB, hardly a reliable source. The Justice Department personnel succeeded in getting him stripped of U.S. citizenship and sent to Israel in 1988 where he was tried and convicted, held on death row for four years, and about to be hanged for being Ivan. He always claimed that he never set foot in Treblinka. Before the death sentence could be carried out, however, family members succeeded in finding photos of the real Ivan, a man named Marchenko.  Israel’s Supreme Court reversed its sentence and refused to consider a second trial because its justices don’t believe in double jeopardy. Demjanjuk came back to America, had his citizenship restored, and resumed a very quiet life with family and friends in Cleveland. Double jeopardy then got its chance.

U.S. officials have never stopped their dogged pursuit of this man. If he wasn’t Ivan from Treblinka, the new charge is that he was complicit in the deaths of 27,900 Nazi victims as a guard at Sobibor. Again, the supposed evidence has been supplied by veterans of the KGB. Demjanjuk is being charged with being a guard at the camp in Poland. No still-alive Sobibor inmate can place him at the camp. He is not being charged with participating in any murders of helpless Nazi victims. Justice officials, once denied and supremely embarrassed by their previous bungling, don’t care. They are determined to get the man they claim was an “accessory” to the crimes perpetrated at Sobibor more than 60 years ago.

On April 12, the Justice Department succeeded in getting a judge to order the frail and sickly Demjanjuk deported to Germany to face the new charge.  One month later, with his appeals exhausted, he was sent to Munich where he will be tried this fall — if he’s still alive.

One question related to all of the persecution of John Demjanjuk is why many high German officials haven't been prosecuted for what did occur at the hands of the Nazis. Plenty of them are still alive and there are plenty of witnesses and a great deal of evidence can be presented. The answer is that the Germans arranged an amnesty for themselves in 1969. So, targeting the Ukainian-born Demjanjuk with questionable evidence that he was a guard will have to suffice for those who claim outrage over what Hitler’s forces did 60-plus years ago. 

An even more compelling question needing an answer is why have none of the arch criminals from the former USSR faced prosecution? Communist horrors that claimed far more victims than did the brutality of Hitler’s Germany are no secret.  And many of those who killed and maimed to propagate Red terror can easily be identified by survivors who really did witness what happened. 

One obvious candidate for prosecution (or at very least worldwide shunning) is former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. A life-long communist who has never retracted his protestations of being “a communist,” Gorbachev is as guilty as any man alive for the deaths of at least a million Afghanis at the hands of Soviet invaders who carried out Kremlin orders during the entire decade of the 1980s. Gorbachev became a member of the Kremlin’s Politburo in 1980 and rose to be the USSR leader in 1985. While he served, forces under his ultimate command decimated Afghanistan, forced six million to flee their homes for refuge in neighboring nations, and kidnapped tens of thousands of teens who were sent to Russia for Soviet indoctrination. Not satisfied with all of these crimes, Soviet troops spread booby-trapped toys throughout the nation and watched as children retrieved them only to have their faces and limbs blown apart. 

Gorbachev and those who served under him, including current Russian leader Vladimir Putin, are guilty of all of this. But they are untouchables according to our leaders and our mass media. They are even given accolades by the current occupant of the White House. No one is even supposed to recall the decades of Soviet terror. But we are led like sheep to accept the ordeal of the octogenarian from Ohio.

Anyone who can’t see something wrong in this picture is himself a victim, a victim of massive propaganda that can only lead to more such crimes. In the end, it must be realized that crime unpunished is crime rewarded. And crime rewarded invites more treachery — with new criminals and new victims.

Photo: AP Images
 

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Peter Francis said:

Historical Ignorance Once again on display Mr. McManus, I find the lack of historical research devoted to this piece both disturbing and disappointing. You should be ashamed that you would elude to Sobibor as Poland's concentration camp. Sobibor was a German Nazi Concentration Camp on occupied Polish territory during WWII. The same applies for any of the other camps found on Poland's territory during the WWII/Holocaust period. You owe the six million ethnic Poles, as well as the six million Jews an apology for not honoring this all important period of history. I think they as well as the next generations who will soon no longer be able to rely on real stories from survivors but on history books deserve better from journalists like yourself. I kindly ask that you correct this grave error immediately.

July 16, 2009

John Halucha said:

Callous ignorance or deliberate revisionism? "Poland’s Sobibor concentration camp" and "the camp in Poland"??? Publisher John F. McManus, you ought to hide your face in shame. Not only have you publicly displayed your stupidity the way you would if you wrote about "Cuba's Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp", but you have insulted the memory of hundreds of thousands of Polish nationals who were tortured and killed at Sobibor and similar German camps. Those death factories were imposed by Nazi German invaders. It is the height of callousness to shift the responsibility away from the perpetrators and onto the victims themselves by calling the camps "Poland's". Change your story to, "... Nazi crimes at Sobibor concentration camp in German-occupied Poland" and later to "the camp in German-occupied Poland" so that we know this was sloppy and insensitive rather than deliberate historical revisionism. Simple human decency, as well as journalistic ethics, demands that you also publish a correction and apology.

July 16, 2009

JIM Presenkowski said:

More historical lies "Poland's Sobibor concentration camp" Poland did not establish concentration camps in Poland. The camps were established by the Germans. It should be stated that the Germans/Nazis established concentration camps on occupied Polish soil. The camps were not Polish. For the genocide that took place the history should be told honestly and correctly.

July 16, 2009

Lee Gonzales said:

Nazi Camps death camps, Soviet death camps, Cuban death camps, Red Chinese death camps One 89 nine year old alleged former Nazi prison guard who was originally accused and tried as Ivan the Terrible had to be released due to the fact the he was not "ItT." Who said he was "ItT?" Why the reliable KGB that's who! We take the word of the KGB and yet when KGB agents who escape to the west to tell their story of soviet treachery they are ignored. Most recent example is Alexander Litvinenko who pointed out that the al-Qaeda second in command was trained in Moscow to serve as a soviet asset. Al-Zawahiri is a red not a Moslem.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_al-Zawahiri Litvineko paid with his life by being given a glass of plutonium tea for telling the world who these "assets" are. Where are the cries for justice for the killer or killers of this man? He was murdered by the KGB the same gang of criminals who tried to frame the Ohioan for being "ItT". Litvineko tried to warn us that communism is playing possum and is very much alive in providing leadership to terrorist organizations. It they provide the leadership, perhaps they provide financing and other support. And all this while our president pays visits to the criminals in Moscow to make "deals" with them. The holocausts that took place in Poland weren't all perpetrated by the Nazis. The Soviets committed plenty of holocausts: Katyn Forrest Massacre.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre The Polish officers, and Polish civilians were murdered by the red army. The barbarians who wear the red star on their hats also kidnapped the Polish officers' wives and forced them to serve the red army. According to our US Ambassador they died of being raped or a slow agonizing death by syphilis. Where are the cries for these Christian and Jewish women? We only hear the chant of the lynch mob to "get the 89 nine year old, get the 89 nine year old!" Hang him, Hang him!" Try him again and again if you have to, but hang him!!!!!!!!!!!"

July 16, 2009

JIM Przedzienkowski said:

Death Camps The following statement is incorrect and needs to be corrected. Retired auto worker John Demjanjuk has been deported to Germany where he will be charged — this time — with complicity in Nazi crimes at Poland's Sobibor concentration camp. The death camp a Sobibor was established and build by the Germans/Nazis on occupied Polish soil. Let us not dishonor those who gave their lives in those camps. A correction is required to let the world know the truth about the camps.

July 16, 2009

Lee Gonzales said:

Nitpicking to change the title of an article and saying silly things like "revisionism" The article by John McManus is pretty clear that the Nazis ran the camps and the Nazis committed the atrocities. Mr.McManus is correct in giving us the bigger picture that the soviets have committed atrocities. Too bad some who posted here don't appreciate being told that. You, Mr. John Halucha, are nitpicking. Anyone who reads the article knows full well that the atrocities were committed by the National Socialist Workers Party (NAZIs)who had invaded Poland from the west,(north & south) simultaneously with their political partners in crime - the USSR ( Union of Soviet Socialists of [phony] Republics), who invaded Poland from the east. These two socialist-run countries conspired to attack Poland and lit the match that set off World war II. The "diplomatic" conspiracy is called the Molotov-Ribbetrop Pac http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...ntrop_Pact Did the socialist from Russia murder Poles? Did these socialists put Poles in boxcars and ship them to socialist concentration camps in the socialist country of former Imperial Russia to be tortured? I didn't read any of these accounts in your nitpicking post Mr. Halucha, Presenkowski, and Mr. Francis. It would appear that the USSR socialists were never in Poland at all, just Nazis.

July 16, 2009

Phil said:

... Excellent analysis. Well put. Those hunting alleged Nazi enablers are enabling KGB lies instead. The KGB and Soviet Russia have yet to pay for their massive crimes against humanity, the persecution of an 89-year-old for 30 years being just one, small example.

July 16, 2009

John Halucha said:

Right and wrong Anyone, including the publisher of The New American, can make a foolish blunder. It starts to look like deliberate revisionism only when the distortion is pointed out and the writer refuses to correct it. What may appear "nitpicking" to Lee Gonzales isn't so trivial to those who know about the tragedy of 6 million Polish nationals who were killed in the conflict that spawned foreign death camps such as Sobibor on their occupied territory. Calling the source of their torture "Poland's" is inaccurate, insensitive and insulting. I kept my earlier post focused to the point, but where does Mr. Gonzales get the notion that demanding clear writing denies Soviet atrocities? Mr. McManus is correct about Moscow's crimes. The Soviets were as responsible for the Second World War as the Nazis, and probably killed more people over the span of their much longer regime. How does that give license for Mr. McManus and The New American to callously call Sobibor "Poland's"?

July 17, 2009