(translation by Daria Antonyshyn)
In the August 23, 1986 issue of The Globe and Mail there appeared an
Associated Press report, announcing that Israel's Court had extended John
Demjanjuk's detention without a formal charge in the Ayalon Prison until
October 1, 1986.
Furthermore, in this report it is stated that John Demjanjuk accuses the
Israeli prosecutors of wasting their time in seeking false witnesses.
John Demjanjuk has maintained from the very beginning that he had never been
at Treblinka, and that the entire story that he was "Ivan Grozny" was a
fabrication by the KGB with the aid of a falsified identity card from the
training camp at Trawniki.
Before dealing with the motives of supplying false evidence against Ukrainian
"Nazis," it is necessary to refer to the important events of this century.
As a result of those events, not only John Demjanjuk but also the whole Ukrainian
nation was victimized. We are living in an age of terrorism, the cruelty of
which exceeds the barbarism of the Huns and Mongul hordes and also the horrors
of Peter the Great, perpetrated on the Ukrainian nation after his victory at
Poltava.
The terrorism, which began on October 17, 1917 (after the Julian calendar),
continues to the present day. The principal actors of this high-handed orgy
of sadism were on the one hand the Muscovite Bolsheviks (Lenin, Trotsky,
Kamenev, Zinoviev, Stalin, Radek, Kaganovich, Andropov and others) and, on the
other hand, the German Nazis (Hitler, Bormann, Himmler, Heydrich, Rosenberg,
Eichmann and others), although before them we saw abominable crimes
perpetrated by the Bolsheviks. It is our contention that without the
precedent of the Bolshevik crimes against the non-Russian nations of the
Soviet Union, the Nazis would not have had the temerity to engage in their
crimes for fear of condemnation by world public opinion.
There is no doubt that in this orgy of crime the greatest victims have been
the Jewish and Ukrainian nations.
According to US News and World Report
Muscovite Bolsheviks have — in the last 66 years — murdered 21 million
Ukrainians (every 4th Ukrainian).
Hitler's Nazis, according to statistical
data, have murdered about 2 million Ukrainians.
The Jewish population has lost about 6 million.
Only in this historical aspect one can comprehend the
tragedies of both the Ukrainian and Jewish nations, as well as the whole
absurd comedy of the judicial proceedings and incarceration of John Demjanjuk,
both in the United States and in Israel.
The treatment and persecution of John Demjanjuk is viewed by Ukrainians as
follows: "by the instrument of the Israeli judicial system, the KGB is
attempting to murder the 21,000,001st Ukrainian, the former Nazi war prisoner,
John Demjanjuk." Is it not an irony that John Demjanjuk was extradited in
handcuffs by a democratic United States to a democratic Israel for the benefit
of the most "democratic" KGB in Moscow? Is there not a similarity in the
strategy of the Russian Bolsheviks who sent Ukrainian soldiers in the Red Army
to kill innocent Afghans, saying "Let the bandits murder one another?"
The perfidity of the Soviet KGB lies in its ability to pit one of its enemies
against another. We cannot fathom the notion that Moscow's KGB has suddenly
become such a faithful ally of Israel that it sympathizes with the Jewish
victims and that it, in an act of solidarity, "discovered" John Demjanjuk — "a
war criminal" — by means of an identity card which John Demjanjuk, in the
course of his travels, somehow lost. What an incredible find for the
Bolsheviks!
The objective of the KGB in the proceedings against John Demjanjuk both in the
United States and Israel are as follows: by means of a fabricated identity
card from the Trawniki training camp, the KGB incited its friends in the
Office of Special Investigations to commence administrative proceedings which
led to the extradition of John Demjanjuk to Israel; thus by means of this
provocation, to pit Jews against Ukrainians. Moscow wants, once again, to
injure the Ukrainian nation with the help of the judicial system of the Jewish
state, namely to show what "bandits" Ukrainians are and in this way to cover
up before mankind and world history its abominable crimes against Ukrainians
and other non-Russian nations in its evil empire.
And now let us review the actions of the police and judicial organs of the
State of Israel. They are either consciously or unconsciously (blinded by a
motive of revenge) fulfilling the will of Moscow's KGB. They are bent on revenge for the crimes of Nazi Germany on Ukrainian laborer John Demjanjuk. To hold him incarcerated without formal charges, under an ever burning overhead light, for over 8 months in the same prison cell where Adolf Eichmann was held, violates all norms of civilized behavior of the state organs. Furthermore, in accordance with the norms of national and international law, Israel has no jurisdiction over the person of John Demjanjuk, whatsoever.
1. If any State were to have jurisdiction over a given individual, there must
be present a legal bond linking the accused with the state laying the charge
or charges. Such a legal bond does not exist between John Demjanjuk and
Israel. At this point we would like to quote J. L. Brierly, author of "The
Law of Nations," 6th edition, page 283:
Another condition of presenting an international claim is that there should be
a bond of nationality between the claimant state and the person injured.
So much is the bond of nationality a condition of an international claim that it
must not only exist at the date of the original injury but must also continue
until the date of the judgment or award.
2. According to the precepts of international law, jurisdiction to try a
criminal has the state in which a crime was committed (personal principle). None of those elements of jurisdiction do Israeli courts have in the case of
John Demjanjuk. The alleged crime did not occur on the territory of Israel
(Israel did not exist in 1943), and John Demjanjuk never was a citizen nor a
resident of either Palestine or Israel at any time.
3. The alleged crime was not committed against the citizenship in 1943.
4. If John Demjanjuk were to be charged in Israel then such charge or charges
would be based on Israeli statute, entitled The Punishment of Nazis and their
Collaborators, which was passed by the Israeli Parliament in 1950.
Thus, this statute came into effect seven years after the alleged crime took place.
We maintain that this statute is not legal.
It cannot apply to John Demjanjuk because it was promulgated retroactively.
Thus, introducing "laws" after the fact has in itself an element of illegality as such laws are often passed not in the name of justice but rather for political purposes.
In many countries retroactive laws are prohibited, e.g. by the constitution of the United
States, articles one and 10, the states are forbidden to pass retroactive
laws.
On the other hand, we do fully support the United Nations Convention of 1948,
On the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, provided the judges
would be citizens from third and impartial nations and the trials were to take
place on neutral territory. When we speak of "court" we think of a state
organ which adjudicates on the basis of previously established legal norms and
on the basis of precepts of justice.
Never and under no circumstances can the incarcerated John Demjanjuk receive
justice in Israel. No self-respecting Israeli judge can in good conscience
declare his objectivity. For eight years he has incessantly read in the
press, heard on radio and seen on television news of Ivan Grozny, who
personally murdered at Treblinka once 800,000, the other time 1,200,000 Jews.
The only qualified and fair tribunal to judge such a case would be an
international criminal tribunal on which neither KGB nor Israelis would be
sitting.
The entire judicial farce involving John Demjanjuk as in the United States, on
the basis of OSI charges, as well as in Israel — can be nothing else but a
flagrant violation of basic human rights of a simple defenseless Ukrainian
person perpetrated by three governmental organs: that of the United States,
Soviet Union and Israel. Furthermore, to compare John Demjanjuk, a German
prisoner of war, with Adolf Eichmann is to compare a fly with an elephant. Eichmann had total control over an individual's life and death, as in this day
have the agents of Moscow's KGB; he exercised that control not only over Jews
but over all other nationalities under Nazi control.
To equate Demjanjuk with Eichmann is absurd. Furthermore, there exists a very old principle in
criminal law which holds that a servant is not responsible for the crimes of
his master or his superior.
Did the Jewish guards, members of Judenrat, voluntarily (which is the main
element of any crime, and in any civilized jurisdiction) guard their Jewish
co-prisoners? Did, under the Nazi or Bolshevik prison regimes, any guard,
particularly if he were not a Russian in the Soviet Union, or a non-German
during the Nazi regime, perform his duties voluntarily and of his own free
will?
Is it conceivable that the Attorney General and judges of Israel are not aware
of this fact? Do the government leaders of Israel not realize the legal proceedings involving a stateless Ukrainian worker on the basis of falsified documentation can be a serious violation of legal process?
By his declaration that Israeli prosecutors are holding him for eight months
in detention without formal charge in order to have more time to locate
"witnesses," John Demjanjuk is accusing Israel's Ministry of Justice in
violation of fundamental norms of judicial behavior before world public
opinion.