ePoshta | 25Jul2009 | Myroslava Oleksiuk
http://www.eposhta.com/

ePoshta website

Re. Partners in perfidy + We can choose not to be victims this time

Re your excellent editorial Partners in perfidy (July 6), where is the world's outrage at the inhumane treatment of John Demjanjuk? Where is Amnesty International and other human rights groups? This is an out and out case of elder abuse.

If he passes as a result of this mistreatment can anybody be charged with his murder? Why is he being portrayed as a Nazi? Only Germans can be Nazis.

Why are they not prosecuting German war criminals residing in Germany and other high ranking war criminals that actually planned and carried out the mass murders of the Jewish and others (including Ukrainians)? Was not Simon Wiesenthal himself a Nazi collaborater?

What can be done?

Zenon Chwaluk

Ed. note: Reasons for Germany's perfidy are proferred in this issue's Feature Editorial "Ukraine's suffering still overlooked by world": "To some degree it's because the "Untermenschen have remained Untermenschen" -- economically underdeveloped peoples with silly cultural practices ...

The more important explanation is that German elites have traditionally viewed their neighbors to its east through the prism of great-power politics....They're just places with pipelines that carry Russian gas to German homes and factories."

"In The case of John Demianiuk -- A Test of Our commitment to basic values" (e-POSHTA May 29, 2009) lawyer Andriy Semotiuk decried the silence of civil and human rights organizations: "What troubles me the most about this case is the silence of individuals and organizations ostensibly dedicated to human rights and their failure to speak up in support of Demianiuk. For example, I was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization dedicated to the protection of the civil liberties of Americans, including protecting the due process rights of individuals. I asked them specifically to speak up in the Demianiuk case and was met with silence."

If we care about justice being done, if we care about how Ukrainians' role in WWII history will be presented in the world media and remembered by those who consume it, this means that more intensive work needs to be done by substantially more courageous citizens to convince these organization of the need to take action. John Demjanjuk Jr. answer to a question at the end of this CNN interview points to what awaits us in the media and what needs to be done:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2009
/04/15/dcl.intv.demjanjuk.jr.nazi.crimes.cnn?iref=videosearch.

Furthermore, the articles that have appeared in Germany's mainstream media such as Der Spiegel have, when unopposed, allowed themselves to be generous with spreading around the credit for Nazi atrocities, as is demonstrated by their munificence in the article : "Hitler's European Holocaust helpers": "... the collusion of other European countries in the Holocaust has received surprisingly little attention until recently. The trial of John Demjanjuk is set to throw a spotlight on Hitler's foreign helpers." (May 20, 2009 http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/
0,1518,625824,00.html
)

We can choose not to be victims this time.

As to Simon Wiesenthal's questionable past see "The head Nazi-hunter’s trail of lies" above.

--M.O.

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Справа Івана Демьянюка -- випробування нашої прихильності основним цінностям

Будь-який американець, обвинувачуваний у співучасті у вбивстві, тобто обвинувачуваний у причетності до одного з найжахливіших злочинів, відомих людству, має бути судимим     американським судом відповідно до кримінального законодавства США, а якщо злочин відбувся в іншій державі, ...бути виданим, відповідно до міжнародної кримінальної процедури, цій державі, щоб постати перед судом там. Відповідно до закону, до винесення судом обвинувального вироку така людина має вважатися невинуватою. Однак у справі Івана Дем'янюка цих основних принципів не дотримувалися із самого початку....
   
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[W.Z. The above 2 articles appeared in the 25Jul2009 issue of ePoshta and are available at the ePoshta website
http://www.eposhta.com/
The Ukrainian-language article on John Demjanjuk written by Andriy Semotiuk is adapted from his English-language article published earlier in  the Kyiv Post and reproduced in ePoshta and my Demjanjuk files at
/fc/2001/semotiuk20090521KyivPost.html

Chief editor Myroslava Oleksiuk must be congratulated for bringing ePoshta into the forefront of Ukrainian affairs since its inception in 1999!]