ap20120320KyivPost.html

Could a US Demjanjuk grave become neo-Nazi shrine?

CLEVELAND -- If relatives of convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk get what they want, their patriarch will be buried in suburban Cleveland -- a prospect not sitting well with Jewish advocates who argue the retired autoworker could, in death, become a magnet for neo-Nazis.

Demjanjuk died Saturday in Germany at age 91, and his family in Seven Hills, Ohio, wants to return his body for burial. Even though his U.S. citizenship had been revoked and he was deported, there is no prohibition against returning the body to this country, the U.S. attorney's office in Cleveland said.

A Demjanjuk funeral in his adopted hometown would turn into a spectacle, said Efraim Zuroff, who leads the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem.

"I have no doubt that a funeral in Seven Hills would turn into a demonstration of solidarity and support for Demjanjuk, who's the last person on earth who deserves any sympathy, frankly," Zuroff said in a telephone interview.

[W.Z. The hate-mongering of Mr. Zuroff is sickening -- he has spent his whole life defaming innocent people.]

Demjanjuk had guarded his privacy carefully, posting a "no trespassing" sign outside his house and turning aside interview requests over the decades.

His attorney appealed Monday to German authorities to arrange for his body to be sent home to Ohio, and son John Demjanjuk Jr. confirmed that, but there was no word on any arrangements or whether a funeral might be done in secret.

Demjanjuk Jr. said in an email Tuesday that any suggestion of his father's burial or grave site turning into a spectacle was unwarranted.

"Over the past 35 plus years our family has had NO association with any part of the neo-Nazi groups, ever. We have condemned Nazi crimes as my father is himself a victim of the Nazis regardless of whose version of the case you believe," he said.

The Ukraine-born Demjanjuk was a retired U.S. autoworker who maintained over three decades of legal battles that he had been mistaken for someone else.

He came to the U.S. on Feb. 9, 1952, claiming to have spent much of World War II in a German prisoner of war camp. He eventually settled in the middle-class Cleveland suburb of Seven Hills and worked as a mechanic at Ford Motor Co.'s engine plant in nearby Brook Park.

That idyll ended in 1977, when the Justice Department alleged that he had hid his past as the feared Treblinka death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible" and revoked his citizenship. The Israeli Supreme Court returned him to the U.S. after it received evidence that another Ukrainian, not Demjanjuk, was Ivan the Terrible.

[W.Z. Only two sentences to describe the persecution of Mr. Demjanjuk from 1977 to 23Sep1993? And even in these two sentences, the hate-mongering authors of the Associated Press manage to demonize Mr. Demjanjuk and Ukrainians with words such as Treblinka death camp, Ivan the Terrible (twice), another Ukrainian.]

Eventually, after many legal twists and turns, Demjanjuk was convicted in May of 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland and sentenced to five years in prison. He died in a nursing home while awaiting appeal.

A U.S. burial site for Demjanjuk could become a shrine for neo-Nazis in the U.S. because they will never forget he was once misidentified as Ivan the Terrible, said Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, noting that there are about 170 active neo-Nazi groups in the U.S.

[W.Z. These people are sick!]

"For neo-Nazis, I think it's entirely possible that a Demjanjuk grave becomes a monument to the alleged evils of the Jews," Potok said.

In Germany, the bones of Rudolf Hess, a deputy to Adolf Hitler, were exhumed under cover of darkness, burned and secretly scattered at sea after his grave became a shrine for thousands of neo-Nazis.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said Demjanjuk didn't have the stature that would attract adoring neo-Nazis to his grave.

"He's not an Adolf Hitler," Hier said.

Any hometown burial arrangements likely would be at Demjanjuk's longtime church, St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in nearby Parma. Parishioners and the wider Ukrainian-American community had been a protective cocoon of support for Demjanjuk for decades.

The church signaled Sunday that it was holding out hope his name might be cleared. Just as Demjanjuk's conviction as Ivan the Terrible had been overturned, "so, too, in time, we believe that new evidence will be uncovered once again finding him innocent of the latest accusations," the cathedral said in a statement.

"Our parish and the Ukrainian community have always supported Mr. Demjanjuk and his claim of innocence of committing the crimes of which he was accused," the cathedral statement said. There was no mention of burial plans.

The U.S. Department of Justice, whose Nazi-hunting office directed the pursuit of Demjanjuk in the U.S., declined to comment Monday on the burial issue.

A U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said the U.S. Consulate General in Munich "is providing consular assistance to Mr. Demjanjuk's family in the United States." There was no elaboration, but such help could include repatriation of remains.

Hier said it might be hard to find a cemetery that would accept Demjanjuk.

"If it were me or my family, I wouldn't want to have anyone buried near a Nazi war criminal," he said. "They are a disgrace to mankind."
[W.Z. It is Mr. Hier and his ilk that are a disgrace to mankind.]

COMMENTS:

St. Demjanjuk ???: 21Mar2012 at 04:43
The way that the manipulating Jewish elite is behaving in trying to FAN hysteria and paranoia about Demjanjuk's dead body...you would think he's going to Resurrect on Easter and lead the Fourth Reich to conquer the world and create yet another HOLOCAUST (maybe with Iranians instead of Germans -{whats left of them}; because Iranians rhyme with Ukrainians(did you ever notice that rhyme? its not coincidence, its written in Scripture somewhere). In THAT case they better REALLY think where he should be buried! I suggest Israel- because that way they can keep an eye on him day and night and drive a stake through his vampire heart when he makes a move!

I wouldn't throw him into the Sea with Eichmann and Osama Bin Laden because then they might resurrect and join forces as a Giant Tidal Wave and take out a country with a large Coastline and instead of driving Jews "into the Sea" cover them "with the Sea"!

Probably the best practical and humane solution may be to let the family bury him in Cleveland and STOP this nonsense!!! Sainthood or not!

OSWZ: 21Mar2012 at 03:19
John D was never a Nazi war criminal, etc.

What he was is a peg to hang a narrative on, in order to market and advertise the Holocaust story.

That it wantonly harmed many families is neither here nor there for the Holocaust promoters.

"This is business, not personal," as the Godfather said.

This latest JD "Nazi shrine" story regarding his burial site is just another wrinkle in that self-serving narrative.

In case you do not subscribe to [email protected] and [email protected] , I thought I would forward you two articles that I posted there recently.
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Taras Shevchenko

Mid-March is the time that Ukrainian communities around the world commemorate the birth/death of Taras Shevchenko. I was astounded to discover that 101 years ago Volodymyr Jabotinsky, a journalist/writer/poet of Jewish origin and the leader of the right wing of Zionism, wrote a particularly enlightening article on such commemorations in Ukraine in 1911.

Thanks to Ukrainian and English-language translations from the original Russian by Myron Petriw at Ukrainian Vancouver
http://www.ukrainianvancouver.com/ , this article is now archived in all 3 languages at
http://www.telusplanet.net/public/mozuz/ukrainophobia/jabotinsky19110309UkrainianVancouver.html

Mr. Jabotinsky was a good friend of Simon Petliura and supported Ukraine’s independence. Unfortunately, he and his ideological allies were removed from the leadership of the Zionist organization and replaced by Chaim Weizman of the socialist wing during a meeting of the World Jewish Congress in 1923. Thereafter, Mr. Weizman collaborated with the Bolsheviks to the detriment of Ukrainians and the Ukrainian independence movement.

In my opinion, Volodymyr Jabotinsky would be an excellent candidate for a “Righteous Jew” award as a supporter of an independent Ukraine.

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In memorium: John Demjanjuk (1920.04.03 - 2012.03.17)

On my FortuneCity website, I have archived 3 newspaper articles (containing multiple links) reporting on the death of John Demjanjuk on Saturday, 17Mar2012 -- St. Patrick’s Day:
http://zuzak.fortunecity.com/2011/2011.html

I would propose that every St. Patrick’s Day hereafter, Ukrainians observe a minute of silence in memory of a man, who was mercilessly persecuted by evil forces for the past 37 years.

His indictment of the German regime -- past and present -- is best expressed in his DECLARATION to the German court as is archived on the xoxol.org website of Lubomyr Prytulak:
http://www.xoxol.org/dem/declaration.html
-- along with background text and photographs prepared by Dr. Prytulak to illustrate the accusations in Mr. Demjanjuk’s declaration.

Similar indictments could/should be prepared against the “evil forces”, which conspired against Mr. Demjanjuk in the former Soviet Union (now the Russian Federation and Ukraine), in North America (United States and Canada), in some states in Europe and in Israel. Perhaps some enterprising individuals will do so in the future.

Over the years, thousands of people of good will have attempted to expose the immoral and criminal actions of the Office of Investigations (OSI) and defend Mr. Demjanjuk. Although they obviously failed, humanity owes them a debt of gratitude for their efforts. And we all owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Demjanjuk, who bore himself with dignity throughout his long ordeal and refused to knuckle under to the forces of evil tormenting him.

The soul of Mr. Demjanjuk is now in the hands of God. May his memory be eternal!
Vichna Yomu Pamyat!

Zuroff=hate monger for hire $$$: 21Mar2012 at 02:50
A very reliable source historian specializing in Soviet and Russian history from WWII to the Putin era says that Efraim Zuroff is in the pay of Russia's FSB (Federal Security Service).

[....]

http://www.wtrf.com/story/17199197/demjanjuk-son-father-never-associated-with-nazis
http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2012/03/could_a_us_demjanjuk_grave_bec.html
http://www.startribune.com/nation/143460096.html
http://www.uticaod.com/news/x299890409/Could-a-Cleveland-grave-become-neo-Nazi-shrine
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20120320/demjanjuk-burial-plans-raise-concern-over-prospect-of-neo-nazi-shrine-120320/