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Myron B. Kuropas   Ukrainian Weekly   04-Jan-1998   No Judenrat member was ever accused

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A dark cloud over Canada

by Myron B.  Kuropas


A dark cloud hovers over Canada, and its name is Neal Sher.

Recently appointed a special consultant to the Canadian Justice Department's war crimes unit, Mr. Sher was head of the U.S.  Office of Special Investigations (OSI) from 1983 to 1994.  Prior to that time, he was OSI deputy director.

It was during Neal Sher's tenure that fraud against federal courts was committed.  Aware that John Demjanjuk was not "Ivan the Terrible," OSI lawyers conspired to keep exonerating evidence from his defense attorneys.  When these documents were found in a trash bin, OSI attorneys accused the defense of stealing them.  One of the trashed documents revealed that Mr. Sher was present at a meeting on July 2, 1986, when deception in the Demjanjuk case was revealed.  Small wonder that the OSI sought to destroy this type of information.

Such duplicity was exposed several years ago by Samel Francis in an article that appeared in Insight magazine.  "OSI has a clever excuse for skirting law and justice," Mr. Francis wrote.  "It doesn't actually try those it accuses.  It merely seeks to show that when they entered the United States, they lied or failed to tell the truth about their supposed role as Nazis or Nazi collaborators."  This is exactly what Mr. Sher will he advising the Canadian authorities to do.  Justice for "war criminals" is not the issue.

Some of the alleged "war criminals" in the United States have gone to court.  Even though all of the trials have been in civil courts, where "preponderance of evidence" is all that is needed to convict, the OSI claims that it has held to a standard that is "substantially identical" to the criminal standard: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.  Don't believe it.  Since most of those accused by the OSI must hire their own lawyer (in contrast to criminal trials in which the courts provide legal counsel) all the OSI has to do to "win a case" is to announce to the media that someone is being investigated and it's over.  No trial.  No due process.  Guilty by accusation.  Unable to bear the enormous legal fees and emotional turmoil required for an adequate defense, the accused sometimes leaves the country.  "The procedures and standards by which it [the OSI] operates are offensive and unjust under American concepts," concluded Mr. Francis.

None of this matters to Neal Sher, who once explained to the Washington Post that mere association with Nazis is enough to convict.  How outrageous!  Under U.S. law and that of any civilized society a person can't be charged with a crime simply because he willingly or unwillingly associated with criminals.  Nor is misrepresentation necessarily a reason to deport.  In the case of Antanas Spokevicious of Chicago, the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that the Immigration Act of 1948 did "not preclude the issuance of a visa to a bona fide refugee who has made a willful misrepresentation of a material fact where the misrepresentation was made because of fear of being repatriated to his former homeland."

A double standard has always operated within the OSI regarding the Judenrat and Kapos, Jews who worked for the Nazis.  To my knowledge, no Judenrat member was ever accused by the OSI; if there were such accusations there was no public fanfare.  Only three Juderat members � Heinrich Friedman, Jakob Tencer and Jones Lewy � were identified by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) earlier.  None were deported.

The same double standard has operated in Israel.  According to Tom Segev, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the Israeli Ministry of Justice introduced an Act against Jewish War Criminals in 1949 and by the mid-1950s was investigating some 40 Jews suspected of collaboration.  Some of the accused were acquitted.  In his 1993 book "The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust," Mr. Segev writes: "As for the guilty, their sentences tended to be lightened on appeal, generally two or three years, but even as little as a few months."  One of the judicial decisions read: "It is hard for us, the judges of Israel, to free ourselves of the feeling that, in punishing a worm of this sort, we are diminishing, even by only a trace, the abysmal guilt of the Nazis themselves."

Mr. Sher has been identified as a "top American Nazi hunter" by the Canadian press.  He is no such thing.  Only Aryan Germans were permitted membership in the Nazi Party and thus far Mr. Sher has found no Nazi Party members in the U.S.

Given the thorough examination of alleged Canadian war criminals by the Deschenes Commission a decade ago, how did Canada manage to get itself into this mess?  Ukrainians in Canada can thank CBS's "60 Minutes," which started the ball rolling last February with an "expose" of "Nazi war criminals hiding in Canada" titled "Canada's Dark Secret."  This was followed by an NBC "Dateline" segment devoted to the same subject.

In April, B'nai B'rith Canada, headed by Lyle Smordin, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, headed by Sol Littman, created a commission to pursue the matter with the Canadian government.  They met with Justice Minister Allan Rock, demanding changes in the Criminal Code to make prosecutions easier, harmonization of the Immigration and Citizenship Acts to expedite proceedings against suspects, and investigation and prosecution of members of the Ukrainian Waffen SS unit Galicia who, in the words of Paul Lungen of the Canadian Jewish News, "engaged in mass murder of Jews and Poles."

Ignoring the fact that the Deschenes Commission had thoroughly discredited his "evidence" 10 years ago, Mr. Littman argued that the 2,000 members of the Galicia Division "have been ignored by the Canadian government."

And finally, voila!  Neal Sher appears to rescue the day, saying that his hiring "shows Canada was serious about tracking war criminals in the country."  Can anyone believe that none of this was coordinated?

A note to Canadian Ukrainians based on our experience in the U.S.: Do not believe for one minute that Mr. Sher and his minions will be fair or that their goal is justice.  Do not fall for the ruse, which will be voiced by Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians alike, that this has nothing to do with our community, that a few expendable Ukrainians, regardless of their guilt, are not worth the trouble.  Don't be intimidated by those who argue that resistance to Mr. Sher will be viewed as anti-Semitic by non-Jews.  And finally, ally yourself with other Eastern European groups who also are being damned.

The reputation of our community is on the line.  Be prepared to fight for it.
Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is:  [email protected]

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