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.
Справа Івана Демьянюка -- випробування нашої прихильності основним цінностям