[BRIGADE] PJB: The True Haters
Published: Tue, 04/14/09
by Patrick J. Buchanan
April 14, 2009
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.
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SOURCE: http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-the-true-haters-1495