Prytulak InfoUkes Posting 06-Sep-1997 War crimes (Neal Sher

Prytulak InfoUkes Posting 06-Sep-1997 War crimes (Neal Sher — still a viable candidacy?)

Date: Sat, 06 Sep 1997 11:15:36 -0700
To: [email protected]
From: Lubomyr Prytulak
Subject: War crimes (Neal Sher — still a viable candidacy?)

I break my vow of silence yet again — this time on the grounds that Jack Silverstone's (Canadian Jewish Congress) promotion of Neal Sher for the position of adviser to Canada's war crimes prosecutors might still be in the works, in which case opposition to Neal Sher becomes an ACTION ITEM, and information justifying that opposition is highly pertinent.

What I have just been reading is Fredric Dannen's 1992 Vanity Fair article on the Demjanjuk trial, and the passages that I quote below will have two purposes: first, to remind the reader of a few of the key defects in the Demjanjuk prosecution, and second to try to ascertain Neal Sher's involvement in prosecutorial misconduct, as this is relevant to his present candidacy for the position of adviser to Canada's war crimes prosecutors.

The first passage that I quote below has crammed into it evidence concerning four significant features of the Demjanjuk prosecution:
(1) that Treblinka SS man Otto Horn's photo identification of Demjanjuk was conducted using improper procedures;
(2) that an attempt was made to destroy exculpatory evidence — specifically, the truthful account of the Otto Horn photo identification;
(3) that the subsequent Otto Horn testimony was perjured;
(4) that O.S.I. (Office of Special Investigations) attorney Norman Moscowitz was fully aware of all of the above, as were others at O.S.I.; more specifically, that Norman Moscowitz was fully aware that the evidence which he himself was adducing from Otto Horn was perjured.

Here is that section from Dannen's article. The use of italics is in the original article:

Horn had known Ivan the Terrible well; they had worked together closely for a year. On November 14, 1979, O.S.I. attorney Norman Moscowitz interviewed Horn at his home in West Berlin. Moscowitz brought with him two sets of eight photographs, with a picture of Demjanjuk in each set. Three months later, on videotape, Moscowitz asked Horn to recount what had happened at their meeting.

MOSCOWITZ: Would you describe, in your own words, how these photos were shown to you? ...
HORN: First I was shown these large pictures....
MOSCOWITZ: Did you in fact identify or recognize someone in those photographs?
HORN: Yes. This Ivan.
MOSCOWITZ: Were you shown another set of photographs aside from these which we've just discussed?
HORN: Yes.
MOSCOWITZ: When you looked at those photographs — this other set — where was this first set of photographs?
HORN: They had been removed again.

In short, a positive identification from a crucial witness, which placed Demjanjuk at Treblinka. There was just one problem. Horn's testimony was false.

John junior [son of Ivan Demjanjuk] and Ed Nishnic [son-in-law of Ivan Demjanjuk] found this out some years later, under most unusual circumstances. In the late 1980s, the O.S.I.'s janitor was in the habit of disposing of the agency's garbage in a dumpster at a McDonald's restaurant on K Street in Washington, D.C. Unbeknownst to the O.S.I., a Demjanjuk sympathizer was lifting the plastic garbage bags and turning them over to the family [of Ivan Demjanjuk]. Donning gloves and coveralls, John junior and Nishnic spent countless hours sifting through the refuse, sometimes having to tape together pieces of documents that had been ripped up.

In one bag they found, fully intact, the original set of reports prepared by O.S.I. investigator Bernard Dougherty Jr. and historian George Garand, both of whom had accompanied Norman Moscowitz to Berlin for the Otto Horn interview. Their reports, written a few days after that meeting, describe in mutually consistent detail what actually occurred.

When Horn was shown the first set of eight photographs, he "studied each of [them] at length but was unable to positively identify any of the pictures, although he believed he recognized one of them (not DEMJANJUK).... The first series of photographs was then gathered and placed in a stack, off to the side of the table — with that of DEMJANJUK lying face up on top of the pile, facing HORN [emphasis added by Dannen]." Next, Horn saw a picture of Demjanjuk in the second stack and made the surprising observation that it was the "same person" as the man in the photo lying suggestively on top of the first stack. At long last, he identified Demjanjuk as Ivan of Treblinka.

To compound the injury, when Nishnic and John junior let it be known that they had found this incriminating garbage, the Justice Department launched an F.B.I. probe accusing them of theft of government documents. (Fredric Dannen, How Terrible is Ivan?, Vanity Fair, June 1992, p. 174)

Then there is the question of the Fedorenko file which contained a large amount of evidence all pointing to the conclusion that Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka as one Ivan Marchenko and not the accused Ivan Demjanjuk. The first quotation below indicates that the Fedorenko file was in the hands of Israeli prosecutors for five months before it was reluctantly divulged to the Demjanjuk defense; and the second quotation indicates that at least some of the contents of the Fedorenko file were in the hands of the O.S.I. at least eight years before Ivan Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel on February 28, 1986:

For the next five months, despite requests, Shaked [the leading Israeli prosecutor] refused to provide a copy to the defense. He finally relented, Ed Nishnic says, after Demjanjuk threatened a hunger strike. (Fredric Dannen, How Terrible is Ivan?, Vanity Fair, June 1992, p. 178)

Congressman James Traficant Jr., a sympathetic Democrat from Youngstown, had made a Freedom of Information Act request ..., asking for Justice Department records on Fedorenko. He was given cables indicating that between 1978 and 1981 Justice had acquired, via diplomatic pouch from Moscow, excerpts and possibly the full text of some of the same confessions that have now turned up in the Fedorenko file. (Fredric Dannen, How Terrible is Ivan?, Vanity Fair, June 1992, p. 178)

The three quotations above are far from covering even the main defects of the Demjanjuk prosecution, but they are ones that happen to be mentioned in the Dannen article and that are most relevant to the evaluation of Neal Sher. From the Dannen article, it would appear that Neal Sher took over as head of the O.S.I. in early 1983, and thus some three years before Ivan Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel:

Zuroff did not fully appreciate Israel's ambivalence toward conducting Nazi trials until April 1983. Allan Ryan had recently left the O.S.I., and his successor, Neal Sher, arrived in Israel that month.... (Fredric Dannen, How Terrible is Ivan?, Vanity Fair, June 1992, p. 175)

In 1983, therefore, at least some of the exculpatory Fedorenko documents would have been in the possession of the O.S.I. for at least five years, and upon becoming head of the O.S.I., Neal Sher would have had three more years before Ivan Demjanjuk was extradited to acquaint himself with the contents of those files. If Neal Sher had been a member of the O.S.I. prior to becoming its head, he would have had even longer.

Whether Neal Sher was present at the O.S.I. during the manipulated Otto Horn photo identification, the destruction of the accurate account of that identification, and the elicitation of perjured testimony from Horn by Norman Moscowitz — or whether he learned about any of these events in time to stop proceedings against Ivan Demjanjuk — is impossible to say from the Dannen article. In any case, these are questions that Canadians could put to Neal Sher in the process of evaluating him for the position of adviser to Canadian war criminal prosecutors.

In several of my postings, I have asked subscribers to POLITICS to demonstrate their ability to recognize and to acknowledge falsehood (where such recognition may be politically incorrect) by disclosing their attitudes to certain individuals known to have perpetrated major scams, namely Jerzy Kosinski, Simon Wiesenthal, and Morley Safer — and others not mentioned by name, such as the three judges at the Ivan Demjanjuk trial. I would like now to name those three judges, and as well to add the names of other key players in the campaign of calumny against Ukraine. Also relevant is the ability to recognize truth (where such recognition may also be politically incorrect), so that added to my list will be supporters of Ukraine, some of whom have attracted the criticism of the Jewish community.

Specifically, the three Israeli judges who found Ivan Demjanjuk guilty and sentenced him to death are Dov Levin, Zvi Tal, and Dalia Dorner. To these might be added the Israeli prosecutors Yonah Blatman, Michael "Mickey" Shaked and Dafna Bainvol — all six of these, had they not been blinded by prejudice and hatred, could have seen (and might have found the courage to acknowledge) that they were the creators of a kangaroo court and the shepherders toward destruction of an innocent man.

Others who will be added to my list are O.S.I. heads Allan Ryan and Neal Sher, and O.S.I. attorney Norman Moscowitz.

Also to Morley Safer, host of "The Ugly Face of Freedom," I would like to add the following names: co-hosts Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, and Lesley Stahl; Executive Producer Don Hewit; Producer Jeffrey Fager; CBS President at the time, Laurence A. Tisch; and interviewee Rabbi Yaakov Bleich. At the tail end, Michael H. Jordan — Chairman of Westinghouse which presently owns CBS — for refusing to instigate any corrective action.

Note that this is not an enemies list. This is, rather a test list which I would find useful in evaluating the credibility of subscribers to the POLITICS discussion group — if such a subscriber discloses his rating of the credibility of the individuals on the test list (whichever ones he happens to know), I will have a much better idea of the credibility of that subscriber. This would be particularly relevant if that subscriber were recommending to me which sources I should regard as reputable and which as disreputable. Any subscriber who absolutely refused to divulge his estimates of the credibility of the members of this test list would appear to be experiencing some conflict between his inner beliefs and what he sensed might be the preponderance of opinion on the part of other POLITICS subscribers. So far, then, the test list is:

Jerzy Kosinski (grand calumniator of Poland, presently discredited)

Simon Wiesenthal (grand calumniator of Ukraine, still flying high, at least in the minds of the general public)

Morley Safer, Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Lesley Stahl, Don Hewit, Jeffrey Fager, Laurance A. Tisch, Rabbi Yaakov Bleich, and Michael H. Jordan (creators or defenders — along with Simon Wiesenthal — of the mainstream hate broadcast, "The Ugly Face of Freedom")

Rabbi David H. Lincoln of the Park Avenue Synagogue (public critic of "The Ugly Face of Freedom")

Dov Levin — Zvi Tal — Dalia Dorner (judges who pretended to try Ivan Demjanjuk as an excuse for executing him)

Yonah Blatman — Michael "Mickey" Shaked — Dafna Bainvol (prosecutors at the Demjanjuk show trial who were aware of his innocence even as they fought to get him killed)

Allan Ryan — Neal Sher — Norman Moscowitz (OSI officials who orchestrated the framing of Ivan Demjanjuk)

Yoram Sheftel (competent and heroic Israeli defense counsel for Ivan Demjanjuk)

Lubomyr Prytulak

P.S. Immediately above is my signature; I had not intended to place myself on the test list. However, as an afterthought, I would like to place myself on the test list — that is, I would be better able to evaluate a subscriber's credibility if he told me also what he thought of me.

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