FEATURE

By DENISE WINEBRENNER

The Nazi war crimes trial of Ivan the
Terrible, John Demjanjuk, in Jerusalem,
is finally taking place, 45 years after he
committed his heinous crimes.

According to workers at the Ford
Brookpark engine plant in Ohio, where
Demjanjuk was employed for 29 years,
he was strange. ‘‘I only worked with
John for a short time,’’ one auto worker
Said. ‘‘He worked in the repair bay, not
On the assembly line. He was a solemn,
quiet man. The only time I ever remem-
ber him saying anything was one time he
Went bananas, screaming and cussing in
English, when I touched his tools with-
out his permission. Around the plant he
had a reputation of making anti-Semitic
Temarks and even justifying what hap-
Pened to the Jews under Hitler. I had no
Idea who he was until it broke in the
Paper.”’

The company’s founder, Henry Ford,
Was an outspoken anti-Semite. In 1938,

© was awarded the Grand Cross of the
Supreme Order of the German Eagle by
Hitler. He was also, not surprisingly,
anti-labor. When the United Auto Work-
fs union was organizing, he fought it
with clubs and armed private cops, and
hired company finks.

“Organizing this place was a mess,”
another worker said. ‘‘It was almost as if
Ford went out of its way to split up the
Workforce to keep the union out. When
this place opened in 1952, there was a
mix of former German soldiers, Eastern
European immigrants, Blacks, Puerto

and ‘‘There were no gas chambers.”’

It is a long way from Dub Machrenzi,
in the Zaparosche region of the Ukraine
in the Soviet Union where Demjanjuk
was born in 1920, to Brookpark, Ohio.
Action by Congress helped Demjanjuk
make the trip after the war. The Dis-
placed Persons Act, passed by Congress
in 1948 and supported by the Truman
administration, enabled an estimated
10,000 former Nazis to enter the U.S.
Demjanjuk was one.

The law increased immigration quotas
for Eastern Europeans from 13,000 to
200,000. It barred former Nazis (a provi-
sion that was later dropped in 1952), but
50,000 visas were reserved for German
nationals living outside Germany. Only 1
per cent of Jewish people in displaced
persons camps were eligible to come to
the U.S. The act allotted 30 per cent of
the slots to farmers (prior to the war,
fewer than 4 per cent of ail Jewish people
in Europe were farmers). Demjanjuk
wrote on his visa application that he was
a farmer.

Unlike the Displaced Persons Act, 88
per cent of all non-Jewish applicants for
visas to the U.S. were approved. If John
Demjanjuk had not gotten into the U.S.,
it would have been remarkable. A New
York Times reporter wrote in 1948, “‘As
matters stand, it is easier for a former
Nazi to enter the U.S. than for one of the
Nazis’ innocent victims.”’

The screening process was conducted
by army intelligence, which had hired
many former Nazis, including the noto-

Evidence of Treblinka would have been buried
along with the bodies if it had not been for the
Survivors and the Red Army.

‘eee

Ricans and guys from West Virginia and
Kentucky. Then, we got the Hungarian
freedom fighters.”
“Ninety-nine per cent of the people
are just regular, hard-working people,
Ut Ford hired some ringers. We even
ad some guy wearing his KKK jacket to
Work. But workers, with help from the
UAW, stopped that.”’
The man with the KKK jacket was
fale Reusch, the only worker who spoke
Up for Demjanjuk during the 1981 trial to
determine whether Demjanjuk would be
€xtradited to Israel. Reusch, who identi-
€d himself to the press as the Imperial
\Zard of the Ohio Ku Klux Klan, and
™Mst Zundel from Toronto, picketed the
Courthouse. Reusch carried a sign that
Said, ‘‘Jews killed Christ.’’ Zundel print-
€d on his sign ‘‘Communism is Jewish”’

Treblinka death camp survivor Josef
zarny, 60, weeps while testifying at the
lal of Demjanjuk.

rious Klaus Barbie, to spy on Communist
parties and anti-fascist organizations in
Europe. Working with army intelligence
was the International Refugee Organiza-
tion (IRO), a United Nations agency.
Jerome Brentar, a defence witness and
the chief fund raiser for Demjanjuk dur-
ing the 1981 extradition trial, worked for
the IRO screening Nazis in Hanau, Ger-
many. Through his testimony, Demjan-
juk’s attorneys introduced the charge of
‘“forced repatriation’ to the USSR based
on ‘‘forged documents.”’ But Brentar
could not cite a single example to sub-
stantiate the charges.

In his book Quiet Neighbors, Allan
Ryan, chief investigator for the Office of
Special Investigations, writes that he
asked the Soviets about ‘‘repatriation.”’
Demjanjuk, Ryan points out, was not an
outspoken anti-Communist in the U.S.,
he did not speak at rallies or even belong
to a rightwing organization. Based on his
investigation, he writes that there is no
reason to believe that the Soviets would
go through the trouble for forging docu-
ments against some obscure employee of
the Ford Motor Company in Brookpark,
Ohio.

John Demjanjuk, as was proved in the
deportation proceedings in a Cleveland
courtroom six years ago, committed the
most heinous crimes in the pre-nuclear
age. He was identified by eyewitnesses
as the sadistic ‘‘Ivan the Terrible, the
death-camp guard at Treblinka, in Po-
land, who operated the machinery of
genocide. Treblinka was a first of its
kind, even for the Nazis. Unlike most of
the Nazi concentration camps, Its pri-
mary goal was not to work its victims and
starve them to death. It had only one

from the courtroom in Israel.

purpose: genocide. In 13 months, begin-
ning in 1942, 1.2 million people — more
than the entire population of Cuyahoga
County (Cleveland) — entered the Tre-
blinka death camp; there were only 50
known survivors, saved by an uprising of
200 Jewish prisoners.

The Nazi high command ordered Tre-
blinka razed following the uprising. The
retreating Nazis planted trees at Treblin-
ka. Evidence of the existence of Treblin-

X

Fascist supporters of Demjanjuk protest outside

John Denjanjuk, the accused Nazi war criminal known as “Ivan the Terrible,” is escorted

Sheftel, one of the wealthiest criminal
lawyers in Israel and a lawyer for Meyer
Lansky, accountant for the Lucky Lu-
ciano organized crime gang, was quoted
by the Cleveland Jewish News as saying,
**I don’t want any person to be convicted
in an Israeli court according to a docu-
ment that the KGB has provided. For
me, anything that comes from Russia isa
priori, a total lie.”’ The specific document
Sheftel was referring to here was Dem-

EN

the Federal Building in Cleveland during

the extradition trial. Demjanjuk supporters are a motley crew of anti-communists, neo-

nazis, and anti-semites.

ka would have been buried along with the
bodies had it not been for the survivors of
the uprising, who were saved by the ad-
vancing Red Army. The Red Army later
dug up the site — the only evidence of the
‘*Final Solution’”’ carried out at Treblin-
ka — and gave the victims a proper bu-
rial.

John Demjanjuk is no small fish. Sur-
vivors testified in Cleveland in 1981 and
during the present trial in Jerusalem that
Ivan, John Demjanjuk, did not merely
pull the switch at someone’s orders, but
gave the orders, tortured the prisoners
and delighted in his job. As recorded in
Ryan’s Quiet Neighbors, Chiel Rajchman,
a Treblinka survivor of the uprising who
hid in a cellar in Warsaw until the Red
Army arrived, wrote in his diary: ‘‘Ivan
is about 25 years old, looks like a strong,
big boss. He is pleased when he has the
opportunity to expend on the workers his
energies. From time to time he gets an
urge to take a sharp knife, stop a worker
who is running by, and cut off his ear.”’

The pretext of ‘‘Soviet forgeries’ and
‘Soviet lies’ is echoed by many of Dem-
janjuk’s defenders. Among them is Is-
raeli lawyer on the case, Yoram Sheftel.

janjuk’s Trawniki card, issued by the
Nazis. Trawniki was a sugar plant that
had been converted by the Nazis into a
training camp for death camp guards,
volunteers from occupied countries. Its
graduates were assigned to the death fac-
tories. The Red Army liberated Trawniki
and confiscated all documents, the only
documents relating to Treblinka. In the
boxes were -identification cards, com-
plete with pictures, including Demjan-
juk’s.

Another passionate defender of Dem-
janjuk is ultra-rightist Patrick Buchanan,
former spokesperson for Richard Nixon
and Ronald Reagan.

Before Demjanjuk’s deportation, the
Reagan administration acted to prevent
his extradition to the Soviet Union. In
1985, when Demjanjuk was ordered de-
ported to the USSR by Judge Adolph
Angelilli, the State Department inter-
vened and the Secretary of State George
Shultz signed a document ordering Dem-
janjuk extradited instead to Israel on
February 28, 1986.

Denise Winebrenner is the Cleveland cor-
respondent for the People’s Daily World.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 20, 1987 e 5