Ivan the Terrible - John Demjanjuk Extradited to Germany

He was just a guard for gods sake !

I think if there was any evidence he shot anyone we would have heard about it by now. Far as I know he was acquitted in israel of being ivan the terrible so he is just 'Ivan the ukranian former russian soldier turned german guard for a spell' and not 'Ivan the terrible'.

As a 90 year old facing 29,000 counts of accessory to murder is ridiculous. There is obviously not much chance of him surviving the stresses of the trial and the new round of publicity & media demonising he is going to be facing. Not to mention being deported from the country he lived in since the 1950's- entire family being left behind and so on.

The political gain from this is pretty clear, ie yet more jewish victimhood on the news, more bumping the holocaust news items to the top again. This is PR mileage at the expense of a 90yr old grandfather who is being used as a political football. The wiesentahl centre really are getting more and more desperate in my view if this is their 'most wanted man'. No wonder they have turned their attention to the art world ( http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055332353 )

One story I read about was around the time Himmler visited Treblinka and found it in complete chaos, with piles of dead bodies lying everywhere. It said there were thousands of people, just fresh off one of the transports, herded into the yard and that Ukranian ss men were on the roofs of the buildings, firing indiscriminately into the crowd.
I'm not sure when this guy was meant to be there but if he was there there is a good chance he was involved in some pretty heavy ****, if he was a guard there, I'd say he probably deserves to die.

This is from Pat Buchannan an American conservative (former Republican supremo) who made a few valid points in my view. I would recommend reading it for anyone who does not remember the original trial ;

http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-the-true-haters-1495

PJB: The True Haters

by Patrick J. Buchanan

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.

Cosmo K wrote: »

he should be prosecuted, age alone should be no excuse.

Nowhere on this thread has anyone said that 'age alone' should excuse someone. However being a 90yr old in ill health deported from the country he lived in without breaking any laws since the 1950's is a factor.

Personally I would expect a more convincing level of evidence to extradite someone who had already spent years on deathrow based on unreliable jewish eyewitness identification & testimony.

If he was a guard that alone is not enough in my view.

You should have proof that he personally did something illegal.

As mentioned there were many guards and some were forced into it - this alone doesn't make them guilty of anything. There were also (as mentioned) sonderkommando who preyed on their own who were never and obviously will never be pursued. There was also a famous rabbi whose name escapes me who coerced jewish women into sex under extreme duress and informed on others while living the high life for himself (I believe this was in the warsaw ghetto but it would probably be easy enough to confirm on google, possibly plaszow).

There are also countless soviet warcrimes which have never even been investigated, let alone pursued through the courts.

I am not talking about a simple red army gulag guard (forced into being a guard) of a camp where large numbers of soviet and german citizens died in agony. Which would be the equivalent to the Demjanjuk case.

I am talking about people on the winning side who created policy and gave orders as well as those who literally pulled the trigger etc None of these were ever pursued as the political will is not there & the victims were not important or fashionable enough for the media or special interest lobby groups to throw their support behind.

Re your other point - there was a general german amnesty though as I understand it there were exclusions to this for exceptional circumstances.

Cosmo K wrote: »

an american court found that there was enough evidence to extradite him to Germany, and a german court found there was enuogh evidence aginst him, to issue an arrest warrant.

Yes, and that is what is being discussed here in this thread.

Ps there would be more information on the amnesty here (mentioned a few posts above):

http://books.google.ie/books?id=VMqpuY24EkoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=wolfram+wette

Page 245 onwards you can also search for 'amnesty' or 'statute of limitations' for more background to this. It was not a straightforward amnesty & as mentioned in the article above it would not apply to non-Germans.

Originally Posted by Morlar View Post

He is to serve as the sacrificial lamb whose blood washes away the stain of Germany’s sins.

Cosmo K wrote: »

What a stupid conclusion!

Probably worth clarifying that I did not say that - it was written by the article's author Pat Buchannan.

On what basis do you think it was a stupid conclusion if you dont mind me asking ? I would agree it's a bit overly dramatical & simplistic but there is an element of truth to it in my view.

Cosmo K wrote: »

As a german , I have to say, I find this statement quite offensive.

I want to google this Pat Buchanan guy first, before I answer your question.

Not to be pedantic but you take one sentence out of context then say it is a 'stupid conclusion' - I asked you simply why is it you think it is stupid, you then reply that it 'is offensive' and that you need to google the author before providing your reasons ?

The author is irrelevant in this context, I was just curious as to why you found it a stupid conclusion that's all. I am interested in hearing your reason before I decide for myself whether or not you are right on that point.

It was a long article which made many valid points of mixed relevance and accuracy - no one is saying 'I agree 100% with every line of this'.

It was presented for informational value in the context of the thread on this subject. As it happens I believe there is a grain of truth in that sentence which you took out of its context. Though I would not be arrogant enough to expect everyone to agree me - so I am just curious really.

marcsignal wrote: »

I think This is the guy you mean.

Thanks for that - that is the same guy I was thinking of as

The suffering of his 'comrades' was beneath him. He was known to get rid of those he personally disliked by sending them to the camps. On top of this, he sexually abused vulnerable girls under his charge. See Auschwitz: the Nazis and the 'Final Solution Rees, L., especially the testimony of Lucille Eichengreen, pp, 105-131. Failure to succumb to his abuse meant death to the girl.

Cosmo K wrote: »

Thanks guys.

Its just, this S**t is gtoing on for so long, the war ended 60 years ago, and here we are, discussing a war crimes trial in 2009.

Yes he is an old man, and maybe the whole thing is just wrong, but just imagine fore a moment, the international reaction, if germany decided not to bring him to court. There would be even more uproar, I can already see the headlines..." Germany lets known war criminal walk free"....

I don't think, that even if he is found guilty, that he will have to go to jail. He is simply too old, but they couldn't just let him go.

Thanks for your post - and sorry if you were made to feel unwelcome.

I agree with what you said there - but there is an 90yr old man in serious ill health now facing a trial for 29,000 counts of accessory to murder with practically zero evidence in exsistence that he personally did anything wrong or illegal whatsoever ( apart form possibly being a guard).

I agree that there would have been uproar (from the likes of the wiesentahl centre, ADL, and other jewish lobby groups etc) if Germany had decided not to proceed with this.

Yes they would have had a field day in the american media gaining sympathy and support if Germany had not proceeded with this. That is exactly what makes the entire proceedings politically motivated which fact undermines any legitimacy it would otherwise have had and is a large part of why it is objectionable in my view.

On the point of whether or not he will serve a sentence - he is right now in prison waiting trial. If he is acquited he is still deported permanently from the country where he raised a family since the 1950's. The effect on the psyche and body of a 90yr old in failing health of a lengthy trial of this magnitude & media demonisation are sentence enough in my opinion.

It is always possible that there may be some evidence about him somewhere which may come to light but at this point the evidenec seems to be ;

the statement of a single dead man which contradicts the statement of a living man (in addition to the accused).

And a list of names we are presumed to believe perished in that camp in some unknown/unproven manner or other.

There is a gaping hole there between the 2 things - a ) possibly he was a guard and c) here are some people we believe died at that camp.

There is no - b) - he committed this crime to x person on or around x date.

Imagine for a second the OJ level of proof american courts usually require and tell me that this case here comes within a million miles of meeting those levels.

Bearing in mind that previously this man has been on death row based on unreliable (and luckily for him disproven) testimony of jewish eyewitnesses this time around you would expect a more impressive standard of proof before going to these lengths considering the circumstances.

The numbers have come down too - it was accessory to 29.000 murders now it is 27,900 (at this rate he will be out by christmas). I think there is an awful lot of political gain involved in this trial for the likes of the holocaust lobby & the pro israel lobby.

There was an interesting article on this in today's independent by Kevin Myers, highlighting as others here have mentioned the total lack of Communist war crimes trials post ww2 (also mentions the Holdomor for good measure).


http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-if-john-demjanjuk-had-butchered-people-for-the-soviets-red-army-he-would-be-a-free-man-1962292.html

Kevin Myers: If John Demjanjuk had butchered people for the Soviet's Red Army, he would be a free man



THE Ukrainian concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk is currently being tried in Munich for his part in the murder of thousands of prisoners in the Sobibor camp in 1943. How different his plight would have been if he had been a Ukrainian concentration camp guard called John Demjanjuk whose crimes were committed under the Soviet Union. Because there have been no trials of the criminals who murdered millions under Stalin.

John Demjanjuk, Ukrainian and Soviet murderer, today would be a free man. John Demjanjuk, Ukrainian and Nazi murderer, faces the rest of his life in jail. The fiasco is made more piquant by the fact that a John Demjanjuk has already been tried for these same offences, but in an Israeli court, and was found not to be John Demjanjuk at all.

There is an elegant symmetry to Demjanjuk's trial: it began just 64 years (almost to the day) after the opening of the Nuremberg trials, which set precedents in both international law and international humbug. It is almost grimly entertaining that the Soviet Union was given the task of prosecuting the Nazis for "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity", matters in which Stalin as co-conspirator with the Third Reich against Poland and the Baltic countries was well-versed. Stalin's legions of Demjanjuks murdered quite as many people as Hitler's Demjanjuks: only a victor's peace, and a victor's "justice", could have drawn a line between the two; and given to the former medals, pensions, and honour; and to the latter disgrace, imprisonment, and public trial.

But another jurisprudential event at the moment draws our attention back to the Nuremberg trials of December 1945: the Chilcot Inquiry into the start of the Iraq War. The two prime categories of war crime that the British and the Americans were prosecuting Nazi defendants for were 1) a secret conspiracy to levy war, and 2) crimes against peace. Many people are now saying that former British prime minister Tony Blair could, on the Nuremberg principles alone, be tried on the first ground, though perhaps not on the second since conditions under Saddam did not merit the term "peace".

I supported the US-led invasion of Iraq because I believed the allied claim that Saddam still had weapons of mass-destruction. The claim was known by Blair to have been a lie. I also thought that to do nothing about Saddam's repeated violations of endless UN resolutions was no longer an option. I still think so.

He was, after all, the only state leader who had used ballistic missiles on three of his neighbours, who had started wars that had cost over a million lives, and who had poison-gassed thousands of his citizens. Another reason for my support of the invasion -- and this was, intellectually, truly deplorable -- was the appearance in the ranks of the anti-war lobby of the standard anti-American, anti-Israeli usual suspects (though I accept that most of the anti-invasion demonstrators were not the usual suspects). However, it is a poor argument that is based on the identity of its opponents.

We know now that the issue of weapons of mass destruction was irrelevant. The decision to go to war, for the purposes of regime change, had been secretly taken at George W Bush's ranch at Crawford in April 2002. This had echoes, not merely of the Hitler-Stalin accord of 1939, but also of another secret pact which led to war: that between the British, the French, and the Israelis to invade Egypt in 1956.

And the prime mover for that -- urged on behind the scenes by Winston Churchill -- was the British prime minister Anthony Eden. Eden, as British foreign secretary in 1943, had been present at the Moscow conference where it was decided to put the Nazis on trial for war crimes, including the secret conspiracy to levy war. If the attack on Poland in 1939 was a war crime, then the invasion of Suez -- in which the British were the prime movers -- was one also.

And had there subsequently been even a pretence of a trial of Eden, might that not have stood as a deterrent to Blair in his conspiracy to invade Iraq, come what may, in 2003? But that hypothesis is fanciful. Who was going to lead the campaign for a war trial of Eden? The USSR? But Soviet tanks were rolling into Budapest to crush Hungary's doomed bid for freedom even as British paratroopers were landing in Port Said.

John Demjanjuk is probably a war criminal and, even as an old man, deserves little of our pity. But his trial is not part of a broad programme of justice, for he has no political connections -- unlike the Soviet butchers of the Ukraine who twice-over tortured his country, before and after the war. More Ukrainians were killed in Stalin's artificial famines of 1932-33 than were Jews exterminated in the Final Solution. Soviet secret police murdered as many Ukrainians in 1941 as Jews were killed in Sobibor in 1943, the period for which Demjanjuk faces trial. No one has ever faced trial for these atrocities, and no one ever will. For history is never about justice; it is usually about power, as Tony Blair's contented old age will one day testify.

kmyers@independent.ie

- Kevin Myers

Irish Independent

Morlar wrote: »

I just did a few google searches to see about the NKVD Katyn executioners and where they are now.

There is no single official authorative documentary style site that I could find just a lot of forums and so on. The search also throws up some amateurish looking revisionist style ones too.

Though there does seem to be a common thread among most of them, that is that the NKVD executioners responsible for Katyn were at least partly composed of communist jews working in Stalin's NKVD.

....

Whether or not that site and the information in it is correct the pattern there is clear - that there is zero political will or effort made in tracking down any nkvd war criminals whatsoever. So it seems to me that not all victims are equal, especially when talking about those of Katyn and Vinnitsa where the perpetrators were at least partly made up of communist jews.

A significant proportion of the wartime Soviet population was Jewish, so it is unsurprising that there were Jewish commnuists and Jewish NKVD members. It's a bit of a leap from that fact to conclude that this is a major factor in the lack of any prosecutions for the Katyn massacre.

The much more obvious reason for the lack of any prosecutions is that the order for the massacre came from the very top of the Soviet state - it was planned by Beria and approved by Stalin and the full Soviet Poliburo. If there were prosecutions, they would inevitably lead right to these men, who remained in charge of the USSR for decades after the war.

(Incidentally, the page linked to above - a CIA research paper - notes that about 700 to 900 of the Katyn victims, or about 4% of the total, were themselves Jews. As the paper puts it: "the Germans knew this, and it complicated Goebbels' effort to portray the atrocity as a 'Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy' -- a mainstay of the Nazi regime's anti-Semitic propaganda.")

Morlar wrote: »

That works on the assumption that jewish involvement with the bolsheviks was proportional which it is widely debated was not.

I would not call it a leap of faith. Nor did I say it was 'THE ONLY REASON' which is what your response seems to assume.

It is a factor however & if nkvd war criminals are resident in israel that would explain the lack of political will to resolve them. The fact that the nkvd victims were non jewish is another factor. There certainly is more of an appetite for pursuing warcriminals who are not jewish than those who were. Who the victims were is another factor in my view.

You're obviously entitled to your view. My opinion is the simplest explanation is the most likely, that is that Katyn was covered up by the Soviets because to investigate it would have proved the approval at the very highest level of this massacre. The participation of Jews in the massacre is a complete side issue.

Morlar wrote: »

Stalin did not remain in power for decades after the war. In fact there were purges of Stalinists from within about 10 yrs after the war. Considering both he and beria were dead 8 yrs after the war that is not a factor.

Other signatories of the order for the massacre lived on well beyond the 50s, e.g., Voroshilov, who died in 1969; Mikoyan who died in 1978; Molotov who died in 1986; and Kaganovich, who died in 1991.

Morlar wrote: »

Consider also that there is no direct evidence that J.D personally did anything to anybody. He was charged with 'being a guard' at a facility throughout a period when x people died. The NKVD ones who had literally blood on their hands from pulling triggers would surely be a far greater prize if the only and pure goal of all of this was apolitical humanitarianism in it's intent.

I don't know much about the Demjanjuk case. I will say that two wrongs don't make a right and if he has a case to answer (and I stress I've no particular view on that one way or another) he should answer it. The failure to prosecute those responsible for Katyn is irrelevant.