An 86-year-old man accused of being a Nazi guard at two of Poland's most infamous concentration camps - Sobibor and Majdanek - lost an appeal against his deportation on Thursday [21Dec2006], US justice officials said.
The Board of Immigration Appeals, located outside the nation's capital in Falls Church, Virginia, upheld the removal decision against John Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker, according to Bryan Sierra, a spokesman for the US Department of Justice.
"We are pleased" by the ruling, the e-mailed statement said.
"We will continue our efforts to remove him from this country as soon as possible, based on his service in a Nazi extermination camp and two concentration camps in Poland during World War II, and his subsequent hiding of that service when he immigrated to the United States," Sierra said.
A federal US immigration judge [Name?] ruled a year ago that Demjanjuk must leave the country, but Demjanjuk appealed, arguing that he would be arrested and tortured in his native Ukraine if he were sent there.
Thursday's ruling rejected the appeal, and upheld a year-old immigration judge's [Name?] findings that Demjanjuk would not face "serious abuse or torture" back in Ukraine. The country, the judge noted last year, has never charged, indicted, prosecuted or convicted "a single person for war crimes" during the Nazi regime.
The appeals panel [Names?] on Thursday upheld the finding, saying that Demjanjuk's arguments regarding the "likelihood of torture" were speculative and not based on evidence.
US immigration officials [Names?] say that Demjanjuk entered the US in 1952, but tried to disguise himself as a displaced person.
He withheld the fact that he served "willingly as an armed guard at two Nazi camps in occupied Poland - the Sobibor Extermination Center and the Majdanek Concentration Camp - and at the Flossenburg Concentration Camp in Germany," the US District Court in Ohio [Name of judge?] found last year.
The Ohio court also agreed last year that US immigration officials had proved their claims against Demjanjuk, saying that thousands of Jews were "murdered" by asphyxiation through gas at the camps where he worked.
[W.Z. "Asphyxiation through gas" is a new appellation, presumably broad enough to include H2S (human/animal emanations), CO2 (diesel engine exhaust), CO (automobile engine exhaust) and any other gaseous concoction which displaces oxygen in the blood.]
Immigration authorities adequately confirmed Demjanjuk's identity through a "scar on his back" and through captured wartime German documents, according to Thursday's court ruling.
[W.Z. None of the so-called "evidence" in these civil denaturalization proceedings would be acceptable in a criminal court of law requiring rigorous proof beyond a reasonable doubt.]
His US citizenship, gained under naturalization procedures in 1958, has been revoked.
� 2006 DPA [Authors?]
[W.Z. 2006-12-26: Three recent articles indicate an unholy collaboration between the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) and the Holocaust Industry:
[Link] Holocaust Industry and SBU Collaboration (2006-10-24)
[Link] Rosenbaum apologia for OSI (2006-10-24)
[Link] Demjanjuk deportation ruling (2006-12-21)
I find this "collaboration" between the SBU and the Holocaust Industry (including the Holocaust Museum, the Wiesenthal Centers and the Office of Special Investigations) extremely disturbing. In the second article, the director of the OSI, Eli Rosenbaum, clearly indicates that the OSI chooses its victims for denaturalization and deportation from the information supplied by the SBU to the U.S. Holocaust Museum. The third article, indicates that the OSI is determined to deport Mr. Demjanjuk to Ukraine.
Should Ukraine decide to accept Mr. Demjanjuk, it is certain that the Holocaust Industry will demand that Mr. Demjanjuk be charged with war crimes resulting in a trial reminiscent of the Moscow Show Trials of the 1930s and/or Mr. Demjanjuk's 1987 show trial in Jerusalem. Ukrainian-Jewish relations are certain to suffer.
In this context, it is disheartening that during his recent trip to the United States (Dec. 04-07, 2006) the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, declined to meet with the Ukrainian Diaspora, but (presumably) did meet with Jewish organizations. Furthermore, that Vladimir Putin supported sanctions against Iran after making a deal with George Bush, does not bode well for U.S. support for Ukraine or for peace in the world.]