Demianiuk Case  – Test of Our Commitment to Basic Values

By Andy Semotiuk

Any American accused of being an accessory to murder, should be tried in U.S. courts under U.S. criminal law, or if the crime occurred in another jurisdiction, be extradited according to international criminal procedure to that state to be tried there. Until tried and convicted, according to our precepts of law, such a person must be presumed innocent. From the very outset of the case against John Demianiuk, however, these fundamental precepts have not been followed.

In fact, the Demianiuk case has involved criminal allegations and prosecuted through civil law procedures as an immigration matter.

Prosecuting Demianiuk in this way enabled those who seek his demise to deport him from the United States by meeting a lower test  applied in immigration cases. Otherwise, they would have had to show his guilt in committing a crime beyond reasonable doubt. They alleged that he was found guilty of being a “Nazi war criminal” when in fact all that has been found is that he misrepresented his past when he entered the United States as an immigrant.

Anyone who knows the history of Operation Keelhaul following World War II when refugees from displaced persons camps were forcibly repatriated to the former Soviet Union where some were killed, others exiled and still others committed suicide, will understand why Demianiuk’s misrepresentations were not necessarily so black and white and directly connected to Nazi atrocities as some would have us believe.

In short, the employment of this immigration procedure alone should have set off alarm bells about what this case may mean for the principal of the rule of law and a fair and balanced judicial system in the United States. But to really grasp the significance of what happened in the Demianiuk case we need to touch on some other basics.

John Demianiuk was never a Nazi. Slavs like Demianiuk, or other races, were either to be liquidated or driven into submission and used as servants for The Third Reich. As a prisoner of war captured by the Germans from the Red Army and allegedly put to work in the death camps, it can hardly be said that John Demianiuk “volunteered” to be such a guard.

The more troubling aspect of this case is, however, that for over a decade those who sought to bring John Demianiuk to “justice” maintained that he was in fact Ivan Grozny, also known as “Ivan the Terrible” - a grizzly figure who was indeed involved in the persecution of inmates in the Treblinka Nazi concentration camp. These accusations led to Demianiuk’s deportation to Israel. Following his conviction in the Israeli court, however, and during the process of Demianiuk’s appeal, the defence team located witnesses who knew the real Ivan the Terrible and who signed sworn statements attesting to the fact that John Demianiuk was not Ivan the Terrible.

The power of this evidence forced the Israeli appellate court to conclude that a mistrial had taken place. Demianiuk’s U.S. citizenship was restored after the U.S. Federal court found the Office of Special Investigations had been guilty of prosecutorial misconduct for not revealing exculpatory evidence to the defence team that would have initially blocked the deportation of Demianiuk to Israel.

The prosecutorial team now maintains that Demianiuk was in another Nazi death camp where he was an accomplice to the murder of 29,000 victims! Where was the evidence of this when he was being tried in Israel? As if it was possible for him to hide from this role for the last 30 years, the target of a day-by-day campaign to convict him of any kind of Nazi atrocity.

Ironically, a few years ago Germany passed a law setting a time limitation on the prosecution of German war criminals, primarily responsible for the death camps. But individuals from other countries like Demianiuk, can be prosecuted!

What troubles me the most about this case is the silence of individuals and organizations ostensibly dedicated to human rights and their failure to speak up in support of Demianiuk. For example, I was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, dedicated to the protection of civil liberties and the due process rights of individuals. When I asked them to speak up in the Demianiuk case, I was met with silence.

Defending someone accused of being a Nazi is a difficult challenge in our society, but isn’t it precisely in such circumstances that your true dedication to your beliefs is revealed?

Let us remember that few have nothing to hide about their conduct in World War II. Let us remember the Allied blanket fire bombings, the Molotov Ribbentrop pact to enable Hitler to invade Poland and carve it up with Stalin, 150,000 soldiers and some officers of Jewish descent in the German Army, the role played by Jewish Kapos, police and the Judenrat during the War. While the world ignores such instances of Nazi collaboration, it watches in silence as prosecutors seek to pin the tail on the donkey in Demianiuk’s case. Why?

The reason is not really about Demianiuk as a [Nazi death] camp guard. There is no evidence of his killing anyone. This is an accusation of guilt by association. It is founded on the belief that anyone who was a guard at any Nazi camp was by that very fact guilty of a war crime. No allowance is made for the possibility that such guards were not there of their own volition but forced to be there by threats to their families or other circumstances. Mere presence was enough. In this sense the Demianiuk case is little more than a Western show trial to reinvigorate the memory of the Holocaust and the collateral damage to people like Demianiuk and others is negligible or even deserving as far as those who are running this campaign are concerned. It is a show trial along the lines of what we saw in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany previously. Those who seek to condemn the atrocities of those regimes and who hold the rule of law dear to their hearts owe it to Demianiuk to rally to his defence.

I have very little in common with Patrick Buchanan otherwise, but he is the only prominent American commentator who has spoken up about this “witch hunt” and I respect him for that. But where are all the others? It appears others are not concerned that the Demianiuk case demonstrates that American courts can be politicized and made to bow to the pressures of expediency. It appears they are prepared to accept that America cannot always be relied on to be balanced, fair and to protect the rights of its citizens and the rule of law.

Andy Semotiuk is a former SUSK National President, and practices immigration law in both Canada and the US, having handled over 10,000 legal cases.