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Will Zuzak; DEMANUK.003 = 1992-08-31 Lafraniere article; 1993-09-16
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Dear Subscribers:
	For your information I am posting an article which I wrote the 
Montreal Gazette last year, an edited version of which was published:
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Letters to Editor
The Gazette
250, ouest rue St-Antoine
Montreal, Quebec   H2Y 3R7
Fax:(514)987-2399

Dear Sirs:
     The article of Sharon Lafraniere of the Washington Post
reprinted in the August 31, 1992 issue of the Gazette concerning
the mis-identification of John Demjanjuk contains several factual
errors. The supposed "voluminous new evidence pointing to a
different man" released recently by the former Soviet Union was
already in the possession of the Office of Special Investigation
(OSI) of the U.S. Department of Justice in 1978. At the August
11, 1992 hearings of the U.S. Court of Appeal in Cincinnati,
Ohio, the OSI admitted that they had failed to present this
evidence to the Court or to the Demjanjuk defense.
     The article fails to mention that all "collected documentary
evidence that Demjanjuk was a Nazi SS guard" presented at the
trials in the U.S. and Israel has proven to be false.
     The article states that 7 (or 10) witnesses identified
Demjanjuk but fails to mention that 68 others did not. Their
accounts were not "extraordinarily powerful" or "convincing". The
transcripts of the Jerusalem trial show that one of the witnesses
was senile and another, Eliyahu Rosenberg, was a congenital liar.
In a 1945 statement, he wrote that he had personally participated
in killing the guard Ivan on August 2, 1943. Pressed by the
Jerusalem court, he kept changing his testimony to suit the
occasion.
     The unacceptable eyewitness identification procedures were
exhaustively described by the "other psychologist" Willem
Wagenaar in his book Identifying Ivan. Although the article
correctly states that the photospreads were impermissibly
suggestive and newspaper advertisements inviting survivors to
identify Demjanjuk were published, it fails to mention that in
early 1976 the World Jewish Congress sent pictures of Mr.
Demjanjuk to various Jewish groups inviting them to identify him.
Thus, the name and picture of Mr. Demjanjuk were well publicized
long before any positive identifications had been made.
     Finally, the article fails to mention that many of the
"documents to prove Nazi war crimes ... scattered in archives all
over the world" are of the same dubious category as the Trawniki
ID card originally used to frame Mr. Demjanjuk.

William Zuzak
Charitable Committee in Aid of John Demjanjuk's Family
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Will Zuzak; DEMANUK.003 = 1992-08-31 Lafraniere article; 1993-09-16
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