The Demjanjuk Debacle: The Trials of a “Nazi” Who Wasn’t by Dr. Myron Kuropas

Book Review by George Duravetz

The 90-page monograph authored by Dr. Myron Kuropas is a well documented account of the tragic events surrounding the life of retired Cleveland auto worker John Demjanjuk.

It appears that well-funded organizations such as the United States Office of Special Investigations (OSI), the notorious Simon Wiesenthal Center, the World Jewish Congress, and a series of American publications as well as a number of marginal Ukrainian Communist and pro-Soviet organizations based in the United States and Canada teamed up to prove once and for all that Ukrainians were by and large anti-Semites, Nazi collaborators and responsible for the deaths of ten of thousands of Jews in the Nazi death camps of Sobibor and Treblinka located in Eastern Poland.

Questionable faked evidence and forged documentation was provided by the Soviet security services who were pursuing their own agenda. They all chose as their victim John Demjanjuk, an unknown Ukrainian post-war immigrant who had omitted stating on his immigration papers that he had served time as a guard in a German camp. He was accused of being the notorious killer known as “Ivan the Terrible”. The fact that the authenticity of the evidence was questioned by many prominent and distinguished American, Jewish and German lawyers and academics was of no avail.

Demjanjuk was placed on trial in Cleveland on February 10, 1981 and eventually stripped of his American Citizenship, and deported to Israel to stand trial for ‘crimes against humanity’. When an Israeli court could not convict him on the evidence provided, he was released and returned to the United States where he was again hounded by professional ‘Nazi Hunters’. They soon got their ‘pound of flesh’. The Americans then deported him to Germany to stand trial for war crimes, although he was not a German citizen and the alleged crimes did not take place in Germany. However, the German courts accepted all evidence at face value and sentenced the 91 year-old man to 5 years in prison for being an accessory to murders committed in Germany over 70 years ago. By this time, John Demjanjuk was in failing health and soon died in Germany.

All evidence points to the fact that Demjanjuk was a scapegoat. The Soviets, until their collapse in 1991, wanted to stick it to the Ukrainian anti-Soviet Nationalists in the West who were a thorn in their side since 1945. The Germans needed to deflect the blame for WWII crimes from themselves onto collaborators of other nationalities who were complicit. Israel and the Jewish establishment needed to justify the billions of dollars received from Germany as compensation for the Holocaust. Furthermore, U.S. aid to Israel will be increased to $3.1 billion by 2013.

Finally, the book is an indictment of the American justice system that can be influenced by special interest groups pursuing their own agenda, and can condemn an innocent man on circumstantial and fraudulent evidence.

The Demjanjuk Debacle is available for $20 from the Ukrainian National Federation of Canada, tel.: 416-925-2770 or email: info@unfcanada.com

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Dr. Myron Kuropas