By PETER WORTHINGTON
At the end of April, American Nazi-hunter Neal Sher appeared before the Commons justice committee to explain why he was worth $200 an hour to provide legal advice in the prosecution of suspected war criminals.
Ever since Justice Minister Anne McLellan hired Sher, controversy has seethed. For a dozen years, until 1994, he headed the U.S. Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) which has a record of being over-zealous (to put it mildly) in prosecuting those it thinks are war criminals.
On occasion, the OSI has been condemned by U.S. courts (and upheld on appeal) for perpetrating "fraud on the court."
Criticism "comes with the territory," Sher told Reform MP Jack Ramsay, who raised the question of John Demjanjuk, whom the OSI said was Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka and whose death sentence was reversed by the Israeli Supreme when they realized he was the wrong man.
It turned out that as far back as 1978 (before Sher was in charge) the OSI had known the real Ivan the Terrible was Ivan Marchenko. Prior to that, and also before Sher's time, one Frank Walus was falsely convicted of being a war criminal when, in fact, he was a 17-year-old farm boy. It ruined his life.
As for Demjanjuk, Sher said courts had determined that Demjanjuk was a guard at other camps. No such case has been proved; Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship has been restored.
San Francisco lawyer Andrew Allen is another who questions OSI methods. In 1986, he defended one Martin Bartesch, whom the OSI initially identified as a "volunteer" SS guard at Malthausen death camp who "participated in the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews."
As it turned out, Bartesch was born in Romania, and in 1943 at age 16, the Nazis gave him the choice of joining either the Wermacht and going to the Russian front, or the SS and going to Germany. Two brothers chose the Wermacht and were killed on the Eastern Front.
Bartesch chose the SS and for three weeks was a perimeter guard at Malthausen before being transferred to the comparatively mild camp of Linz III, and then going to the Eastern front where he was captured by the Red Army.
Bartesch's son, Heinz, says his father "didn't volunteer for the SS because he liked it, but because he didn't have a choice." Although Bartesch never set foot inside Malthausen, during his three-week stint he shot an escaping prisoner.
While never convicted of anything, Bartesch was in line to be deported for allegedly lying on his immigration entry form.
"SECOND CLASS" SS
Heinz says this is untrue: "My father told immigration that he'd been conscripted into the SS, and they understood. Nazis had the elite SS, Germans only, and SS units comprised of conquered peoples. Second class so to speak."
"I got an anonymous package of documents that showed the OSI withheld evidence and simply wanted a conviction," says Allen. He said the OSI threatened him with possessing stolen property.
Bartesch agreed to "voluntarily" leave the U.S. for Austria, otherwise he'd have been deported to Romania where, with Ceaucescu in power, he felt he'd have been killed. As it was, he died the following year � as did his OSI prosecutor, Mike Bernstein, who was on the Pan Am plane that crashed in 1988 at Lockerbie, Scotland. Bartesch's wife, Anne, is so bitter she left the U.S. to live in Canada and fears reprisals if she complains. She says: "We left America "voluntarily" � the same way Martin was "voluntarily" conscripted into the SS."
Allen has complained to the justice department's ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), urging an investigation into whether "OSI attorneys have engaged in a pattern of misconduct by concealing exculpatory evidence and failing to retract disproved allegations." He says: "I felt strongly then, as I do now, that our justice system should not be corrupted. Just the accusation of 'war criminal' is tantamount to guilt in the public's mind. Nazis are as popular as pedophiles."
Sher acknowledged to the Commons committee that the OPR has been investigating him and the OSI for perjury, but assured the committee that he'd been exonerated. When I contacted them, the OPR refused to comment, saying the report hasn't yet been completed, although it would be a surprise to me if it was critical of Sher.
Of Bartesch, Guy Wright, a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner wrote in 1986: "It should be obvious that a boy of 16 did not set policy and wasn't in a very good position to defy Hitler's loonies. Can't the OSI find bigger fish to fry?"
Along with others, MP Jack Ramsay says: "We have Canadians who know all about Nazis, and don't need this sort of outside help."