Lorain/Elyria, OH
New attempt by Demjanjuk’s lawyer to halt trial in Germany
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MUNICH — John Demjanjuk’s lawyer made a new attempt today to halt the 89-year-old’s trial on charges that he was an accessory to the murder of thousands of Jews at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp.
Demjanjuk’s defense team has portrayed the retired Ohio auto worker, who was deported from the United States in May, as a victim of the Nazis and then of judicial authorities in several countries.
German prosecutors, however, say he was a guard at Sobibor and an accessory to the murder of 27,900 people.
Defense lawyer Ulrich Busch argued anew that German law can’t be applied to the case of the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk. He also called for the trial to be suspended so he can get documents from earlier proceedings against his client in the U.S., Israel and elsewhere that he said weren’t given to the defense.
“The defense couldn’t be prepared because of the missing documents,” he told the Munich state court.
Prosecutor Hans-Joachim Lutz roundly rejected Busch’s assertions, saying no documents had been withheld.
The court already has dismissed a string of similar motions from Busch to have the case thrown out or the trial halted. It was not clear when the judges would rule on the new arguments.
Demjanjuk was brought into court Tuesday in a wheelchair. He spent the session lying on a bed, with a blue baseball cap pulled down over his eyes.
The prosecution maintains that Demjanjuk, a Red Army soldier, volunteered to serve as a guard for the SS after his capture by the Germans in 1942. Demjanjuk denies ever having served as a guard.
Also Tuesday, the court heard testimony from historian Dieter Pohl, from Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University, on the Nazis’ campaign to exterminate Jews in occupied Poland, where the Sobibor camp was located.
“The sole purpose of the Sobibor camp was to murder people,” Pohl told the court.
There are no direct living witnesses to Demjanjuk’s alleged activities at Sobibor but prosecutors say if he was a guard there it means he was involved in the Nazi machinery of destruction.
The trial in Germany comes after 30 years of legal action against Demjanjuk on three continents.
Demjanjuk had his U.S. citizenship revoked in 1981 after the Justice Department alleged he hid his past as the notorious Treblinka guard “Ivan the Terrible.” He was extradited to Israel, where he was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1988, only to have the conviction overturned five years later as a case of mistaken identity.
In the latest prosecution, Demjanjuk is accused of serving as a “Wachmann” or guard, the lowest rank of the volunteers who were subordinate to German SS men. It is the first time a conviction has been sought against someone so low-ranking without proof of a specific offense.
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Since there were NO gas chambers at Sobibor, why is Demjanjuk on trial?
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He should be let go, he was already found inocent by Isreal.
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To CT Managing Editor, Julie Wallace,
Is it true that there were close to 20 survivors of one of the camps that Demjanuk allegedly served in who stated that he was not the guy that the Feds say he is.
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Supposedly they all appeared on Dick Feagler’s WVIZ-TV Channel 25 PBS Program at some point in time.
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Demjanuk’s son (John Jr) lives in Richfield, Ohio and his telephone number is available via the Internet White Pages,,, he could provide you with the air date of any such show and the producer at WVIZ-TV who could verify/clarify what was maintained on that show.
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If this is true, then this is the SECOND TIME that Demjanuk would have been misidentified.
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In terms of “Journalistic Responsibility” this , if true, would be no different than Spirko being removed from Ohio’s Death Row to serve a “life sentence” or Kenneth Richey being sent home a free man to Scotland from Ohio’s Death Row.
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As I recall, there was MISCONDUCT by the US Justice Department’s OSI Division in the first case when a clerk within the US Justice Department informed Congressman James Traficant that MULTIPLE PROSECUTORS watched silently as one prosecutor threw into the trash evidence that Demjanjuk was not Ivan The Terrible,
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Traficant’s staff had to go to the dumpster to retrieve the information/evidence
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Was the OSI willing to allow someone they knew NOT TO BE Ivan The Terrible to face hanging in Israel because it would have been too embarrassing to return him from Israel?
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Who brought the “mistaken identity” mentioned in the Chronicle article to light?
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When was the “mistaken identity” discovered and how?
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I mean we all have a tendency to just read along and not actually THINK of all of the elements involved in “mistaken identity” from a guy who couldn’t avoid extradition to Israel and was actually in a Death Penalty trial in Israel before they realized he was not the guy.
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How many years in prison did the prosecutors serve for destroying evidence?…. Okay, how many MONTHS did they serve for destroying evidence?
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Were they even arrested at all?
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If John Demjanuk is truly the lowest serving guard to be prosecuted… then I’d respectfully submit that the 5 bazillion journalistic stories we’ve seen SHOULD HAVE BEEN better spent on continual confrontation of the US Department of Justice as to why those prosecutors were not charged with crimes that would put them behind bars for 20 years.
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After all, they were discarding evidence in the trash that was the only thing that would save Demjanuk from the hangman’s noose.
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We witnessed the extensive “media coverage” of the miscounduct of Prosecutor Nifong in the Duke University LaCrosse Players’ rape case.
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There’s a STORY here as regards to the OSI that somebody doesn’t want talked about at all… or in the alternative, they want it quickly glossed over.
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It was Paul Facinelli’s SERIES of CT articles that “got the ball rolling” to eventually release Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen and got Facinelli the “Women in Journalism” award.
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If even one of the elements above is true, then the CT is faced with the same problem they were faced with when the CT was approached with the troubling revelations surrounding the Head Start case.
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I’ve sent this as a Personal Message to CT Managing Editor, Julie Wallace as well as posted it as a “comment”
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Julie… it’d probaly be better to ask Demjanjuk Jr to give you the name of the US Attorney for Demjanjuk to give you the straight facts AS OPPOSED TO Demjanjuk Jr himself.
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I’m particularly interested in what the US Sixth Circuit (second highest court in the land) had to say in the way of admonishment to the US Justice Department and how much trouble they experienced in even dragging the US Justice Department before them (supposedly one Justice had to get close to 28 of his fellow 6th ircuit Justices to sign a petition)
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Julie Wallace’s profile….
“I am the managing editor of The Chronicle-Telegram in Elyria, a feisty smaller paper that covers all of Lorain County”
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Well, if you’re truly FEISTY and any of these elements are true…then the “FEISTY smaller paper” is truly going to “open up a can of worms” that some don’t want opened
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I think it would be a good idea to invite the County’s High Schools Journalism Students to follow along as the US Government is questioned…. couple it with some reading within the body of textual knowledge in Journalism 101 classes and maybe let the kids have the opportunity to get some “Independent Studies” credits toward an Associate Degree… I think 4 credits is the maximum that can be awarded to “independent Studies”
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John (Ivan) Demjanjuk is not on trial for being “Ivan the Terrible”…
He is on trial for being a SS guard at Sobibor where Jews (as many as 200,000) were asphyxiated. The Nazis were killing Jews by using the exhaust gas of a gasoline engine being piped into a closed building.
During Demjanjuks trial in Israel, he himself testified that he couldn’t have been Ivan the Terrible because he was at Sobibor at the time.
Demjanjuk had a tattoo removed from under his left arm that indicated he was in the SS.
The weapons registry at Sobibor bears Demjanjuks signature many times as he signed out his assigned weapon.
Remember the “show” that was put on here in Cleveland where Demjanjuk was wheeled out of his home and into a courtroom supposedly in excruciating pain and then that same week was filmed walking around laughing by a TV crew???
He lied on his immigration paperwork when he came to America and stated he was not a member of the SS.
He lied on his paperwork again to gain American citizenship.
He’s finally getting what he deserves…
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Very interesting, Raven…thank you!
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I defer to your advanced knowledge of this matter.
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Were there gas chambers at Sobibor?
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Why did Demjanuk volunteer for such duty?… What were the consequences he would have faced if he did not volunteer?… What were the circumstances Demjanuk was in when he volunteered… If you had been in his circumstances and facing the fate he knew he was facing, what would you have done, Raven?
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What would you have hoped you would have done, Raven?
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You never mentioned anything surrounding the “mistaken identity”, Raven?
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How many years in prison did the US Justice Department OSI prosecutors serve in prison for destroying evidence< Raven?
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Okay…how many MONTHS did they serve in prison, Raven?
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Raven, were the prosecutors even arrested?
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Raven…were the prosecutors who destroyed the evidence allowed to continue their careers?
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Raven, were the prosecutors disbarred from practicing law?
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Raven…who faced any sort of punishment for destroying evidence?
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Raven…. in light of this conduct by the US Justice Department, why should we believe anything they say… Destroying/discarding evidence…no/little punishment for the prosecutors who did the deed?
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Yes, Raven… i do remember when Demjanuk was feigning illness…that is why I’d like to get Julie Wallace get the answers from an attorney…not the Demjanuk family.
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Raven,
I never stated that John Demjanuk was on trial for being “Ivan the Terrible”…. what I stated was that when the US Justice Department prosecutors discovered he was not Ivan the Terrible…. they destroyed/discarded the only evidence available that would prove otherwise.
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Is that true, Raven?
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A guy is getting ready to be hung by a rope till he was dead in Israel for being Ivan the Terrible and the US Justice Department Prosecutors who had the evidence that proved otherwise attempted to have the evidence destroyed by discarding it in the trash?
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Is that true, Raven?
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Pete…
I was not responding to you directly when addressing Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible…it was to another uninformed poster.
Is carbon monoxide considered a gas??? It certainly is when piped into a sealed room with 100 people inside it with the intent to kill them.
Insofar as the evidence being withheld from Immigration officials regarding his EXTRADITION, it is a fact that 2 Justice Department LAWYERS withheld 2 written testimonies that indicated that Demjanjuk was not Ivan the Terrible, that another individual Ivan Marchenko was.
Would you believe that John (Ivan) Demjanjuk listed his mothers maiden name as MARCHENKO on his immigration paperwork…which further implicated him at the time (1978).
It was revealed during his SC trial in Israel that his listing of his mothers maiden name was a mistake and that he happened to choose the first Ukrainian name that came to mind. Funny how he chose the exact name of Ivan the Terrible.
Those two attorneys were cleared of misconduct because it would implicate him (Demjanjuk) further by including those two testimonies.
Those statements were never destroyed, they were in fact included with 37 other Treblinka guard statements which his defense attorneys used in his Israeli SC appeal.
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Thank you, Raven…
How was Jim Traficant’s staff involved?
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Did Traficant’s staff go dumpster diving?
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Did Feagler on his WVIZ- TV show have 20 survivors from Sobibor or elsewhere state that Demjanjuk was not the guy the US Government now claims he is?
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Sobibor then did indeed have a gas chamber… Carbon monoxide would still be mass murder
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What were the circumstances surrounding Demjanjuk’s “volunteering”… Was he indeed starving in a Nazi POW camp?
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If he had not volunteered, would he have starved to death?
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Did Stalin make it clear that any Russian Forces who surrendered would be executed after the war? Stalin did murder somwhere in the neighborhood of 20 million, correct?
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So… under the “walk in someone else’s moccassins”… we have the rich, flat farmlands of the Ukraine constatntly being coveted by all of its neighboring countries….
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…with no natural geographical/geological defenses/fortifications - the Ukraine was getting whipped in wars by almost everybody…
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…so as a 15-year old, Demjanjuk was forced to serve in the Soviet Army agaoinst the Nazis.
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..Stalin has all Soviet soldiers told to fight to the death and don’t surrender.
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..Demjanjuk’s unit is captured and placed into a Nazi POW camp where they are being starved to death
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… a “way out” is offered to SOVIET POW Prisoners to escape “starving to death” by serving as “concentration camp” guards
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…and so the kid who had no choice but to serve for the Soviet Army now made a decision to “live” by being a participant in the murder of others.
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..how old was that kid when he chose not to starve to death… 24-years-old??,… 25-years-old??
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…under those circumstances, Raven…what would you have chosen to do, Raven?
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Undoubtedly, there were those who chose to “starve to death” rather than participate in “mass murder”.
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…but what would you have done when presented with those two alternatives, Raven?
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…and so now a scared 15-year old FORCED TO FIGHT a war for the Soviets turns into a scared 20-year old and then a scared 25-year old and then he tries to escape into the United States to perhaps find the only peace he knew in his life.
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That peace he found came upon the backs of thousands of gassed Jews, but presented the Devil’s choice of seeing 10,000 or 100,000 others die (and being a participant) to save your own life from “starving to death”, what would you have done, Raven?
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…and the horrible question that the rest of us must ask, “What would we ourselves have done?”… Undoubtedly, there were women, boys and girls gassed to death with Demjanuk standing guard.
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That was the trade Demajnuk may have made… “I won’t starve to death in a NAZI POW Camp…so to keep food in my belly, I’ll stand guard over 100,000 women and children to prevent them from escaping while my NAZI captors murder them and afterwards feed me dinner”
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There were No gas chambers at Sobibor. None of the so-called witnesses can agree on what type of a building housed the so-called gas chamber. Its location, or what it was made of; wood, brick, concrete have all been claimed. Just like CO gas, or was it Zyklon, or was it Benzene, or was it Chlorine all have been claimed by the witnesses as being used.
Trap doors in the floor of the gas chamber have been claimed, and no trap doors in the floor of the gas chamber have also been claimed.
The sooner that gas chamber stories go the way of soap, and lamp shades made from Jews the better off we will all be.
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Well, an anti-Zionist Rabbi from Cleveland showed me the tatoo on his arm, Saw Mill….
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…and the parents of an anti-Zionist Professor at DePaul University, Norman Finkelstein, both witnessed the genocide.
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Two anti-Zionist Jewish voices who state that the Holocaust did indeed occur.
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There were no gas chambers, no Jews made into soap, no jews made into lamp shades.
Those who got tatooed were common criminals, not all Jews were tatooed. That’s another myth.
How many wild stories have you heard of Jewish survivors who claim they were gassed multiple times and survived? Or the latest one in England, about the Jew who claimed his kidneyut out, and he watched while it was being cut out. That whopper even brought opinions from well known British surgeons.
‘He cut into me, without anesthetic,’ said Mr Ganon.
‘The pain was indescribable. I felt every slice of the knife. Then I saw my kidney pulsating in his hand. I cried like a madman, I cried out the prayer; “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one…”
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I just found the most comprehensive work that I’ve personally read explaining the circumstances surrounding the Demjanuk case.
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It is a compelling story.
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It was written by an anti-Zionist Jew, Scott Raab, who works for Esquire Magazine and who has relatives who died in The Holocaust.
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Both Raven and Saw Mill should read it.
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Every issue that I personally had questions about were touched upon.
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Here is the link to the article:
http://www.esquire.com/features/john-demjanjuk-1109
Here is Former Nixon speechwriter and former presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan’s comment.
http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-the-true-haters-1495
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I just found the most comprehensive work that I’ve personally read explaining the circumstances surrounding the Demjanuk case.
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It is a compelling story.
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It was written by an anti-Zionist Jew, Scott Raab, who works for Esquire Magazine and who has relatives who died in The Holocaust.
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Both Raven and Saw Mill should read it.
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Every issue that I personally had questions about were touched upon.
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To access the Esquire Magazine Article on Demjanuk by Scott Raab:
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Google/Bing the following search terms:
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“John Demjanjuk: The Last Nazi”
“Esquire”
“Scott Raab”
Here is Former Nixon speechwriter and former presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan’s comment.
Google/Bing the following search terms:
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“Buchanan”
“The True Haters”
“Demjanjuk”
@The Raven…
… the OSI prosecutors were QUITE A BIT MORE CULPABLE than the investigation which …cough…”cleared them”.. The US Sixth Circuit stated so emphatically.
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Raven…were you being “intellectually dishonest” when you cited an investigation which cleared two prosecutors?
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Raven…did Traficant’s staff have to go dumpster diving?
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Raven… there is a SECOND John Demjanuk who lived in the Ukranian Village where Demjanuk grew up
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Also, Raven…there is not ONE WITNESS to Demjanjuk doing any violent act and there is one survivor who stated that he/she knew ALL OF THE GUARDS and Demjanjuk was not one of them
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Hey Pete…instead of getting your information from a magazine, why don’t you research the transcript of his Supreme Court appeal in Israel…yourself.
Nice try on the second Ivan Demjanjuk in the Ukraine…he was identified by a family member as having the same name but it was not the person in the photograph the KGB was using to locate him.
The KGB immediately left the village…the photo did not match a photo the family had of the “suspected” Ivan.
Do you honestly believe that if the KGB had a credible shred of evidence that he was the Ivan Demjanjuk they were looking for that they would have let it lie?
If you believe that then this is a conversation in futility.
Another note…no PROSECUTORS were involved in a cover-up of Demjanjuk related statements or testimony.
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Hello Raven,
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Thanks for the incomplete response… you are in the unfortunate position of having an anti-Zionist Jew(Scott Raab), a regular contributor to Esquire Magazine
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What were the “job titles”… you stated two attorneys at OSI… you’re splitting hairs, old chum…splitting hairs to avoid discussion of the seminal issues.
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Did the article correctly cite the US Sixth Circuit in its condemnation of the OSI….
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Funny thing: The Israeli Supreme Court decided to let Ivan Demjanjuk walk.
The horribly funny thing — not to the Israelis, many of whom had doubts about prosecuting Demjanjuk from the start — was that some of the evidence that led to his release in 1993 had come to light years before and was withheld from the Israelis by the American government — the Office of Special Investigations of the Department of Justice, the very same cadre of Nazi hunters who had urged Israel to charge him with being Ivan the Terrible.
Why? Because Ivan the Terrible was a trophy fish, and John Demjanjuk was small fry, and whatever doubt the OSI harbored about his true crimes — and the records show that some of its investigators there felt doubts galore — if the agency wanted to burnish its reputation and justify its budget, it needed a villain big and bad enough to convince the cautious Israelis to mount a show trial.
Funny thing: The strongest documentary evidence the OSI did give to Israel, an SS-issued ID card, clearly put Demjanjuk at Sobibor during the same time that Ivan the Terrible was at Treblinka. The three judges and the lawyers on both sides wrestled vainly with this inconvenience, but the Treblinka survivors’ eyewitness testimony — sanctified, consecrated, beyond need of proof by virtue of their hideous suffering and lifelong grief — condemned John Demjanjuk to death.
But the kicker, the real punch line, was yet to come. On appeal, the Supreme Court of Israel, faced with dozens of affidavits from Treblinka guards identifying Ivan Marchenko as Ivan the Terrible, unanimously overturned Demjanjuk’s death sentence, and also unanimously ruled that Israel could not retry him for crimes he may have committed at Sobibor — because he had not been extradited for Sobibor, because no Sobibor survivors could identify him, and because, as chief judge Meir Shamgar wrote, “The complete truth is not the prerogative of the human judge.”
Funny thing, though: The OSI, even after being rebuked by the U. S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals for its “reckless disregard for the truth” in its pursuit of Demjanjuk, continued to hound him for lying on his emigration forms in 1952.”
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Raven,
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If the Nazis were starving you to death in a POW Camp and you had the option to betray your fellow Jews to the Gas Chambers to stay alive what would you have done?
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After you provide an answer to the Traficant Dumpster Diving question, I’d next like an answer to that
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Again, I cite anti-Zionist Jew, Scott Raab from the Esquire Article:
“I myself don’t find it to be a particularly thorny question. But then I’ve never doubted that even as a prisoner and a Jew, I would have done whatever would have kept me alive; …
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…..and while it’s pretty to think that I might’ve used whatever drop of strength I had to strike a blow, to brain one enemy, to die on my feet rather than live on my knees, I see little evidence for this in the actual course of my actual life,….
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….. and I also thank God for never putting such a test in front of me. I’ve failed much easier.’
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Raven,
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Do you see “evidence in the actual course of your life” where you chose to “die on yor feet” AS OPPOSED TO “live on your knees [in fear of starvation/murder]“.
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You yourself have passed ( or “would pass”) the “test” that John Demjanuk failed and anti-Zionist Jew, Scott Raab would have failed???
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Like Scott Raab, have you yourself FAILED MUCH EASIER tests, Raven?
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