Useful Enemies

[nhboy]

Useful Enemies: John Demjanjuk and America's Open-Door Policy for Nazi War Criminals by Richard Rashke

"John “Iwan” Demjanjuk was at the center of one of history’s most complex war crimes trials. But why did it take almost sixty years for the United States to bring him to justice as a Nazi collaborator?

The answer lies in the annals of the Cold War, when fear and paranoia drove American politicians and the U.S. military to recruit “useful” Nazi war criminals to work for the United States in Europe as spies and saboteurs, and to slip them into America through loopholes in U.S. immigration policy.

During and after the war, that same immigration policy was used to prevent thousands of Jewish refugees from reaching the shores of America.

The long and twisted saga of John Demjanjuk, a postwar immigrant and auto mechanic living a quiet life in Cleveland until 1977, is the final piece in the puzzle of American government deceit.

The White House, the Departments of War and State, the FBI, and the CIA supported policies that harbored Nazi war criminals and actively worked to hide and shelter them from those who dared to investigate and deport them.

The heroes in this story are men and women such as Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman and Justice Department prosecutor Eli Rosenbaum, who worked for decades to hold hearings, find and investigate alleged Nazi war criminals, and successfully prosecute them for visa fraud.

But it was not until the conviction of John Demjanjuk in Munich in 2011 as an SS camp guard serving at the Sobibor death camp that this story of deceit can be told for what it is: a shameful chapter in American history.

Riveting and deeply researched, Useful Enemies is the account of one man’s criminal past and its devastating consequences, and the story of how America sacrificed its moral authority in the wake of history’s darkest moment."

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[GURPS]

The White House, the Departments of War and State, the FBI, and the CIA supported policies that harbored Nazi war criminals and actively worked to hide and shelter them from those who dared to investigate and deport them.

there was no CIA in the War Yrs

 

[MadDogMarine]

Useful Enemies: John Demjanjuk

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Useful enemy or Political prosecution courtesy of our loving and corrupt D.O.J.??
""My father fell asleep with the Lord as a victim and survivor of Soviet and German brutality since childhood," Demjanjuk Jr. said. "He loved life, family and humanity. History will show Germany used him as a scapegoat to blame helpless Ukrainian POWs for the deeds of Nazi Germans."
Demjanjuk spent most of his 18-month trial in Munich lying in a special bed brought into the courtroom, and listened to the proceedings through a Ukrainian interpreter.
Though he made no lengthy statements to the court on his own, in one read aloud by his attorney, he told the panel of judges he had been a victim of the Nazis himself – first wounded as a Soviet soldier fighting German forces, then captured and held as a prisoner of war under brutal conditions.
"I am again and again an innocent victim of the Germans," he said in the statement."
John Demjanjuk, Convicted Nazi Criminal, Dies
"In 1993, after the defence in the Israeli proceedings amassed irrefutable evidence of Demjanjuk’s innocence, the Israeli Supreme Court lifted the sentence, dismissed the charges (that incidentally included the charge that he was a guard in Sobibor), and allowed him to return to the United States. In the meantime a U.S. Federal Appeals Court had opened up his case after determining that U.S. prosecutors were guilty of prosecutorial misconduct in failing to earlier reveal to the defence a raft of files with exculpatory evidence they had. Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship was reinstated and he was allowed to go free once again.
“I am again and repeatedly an innocent victim of the Germans
As it turned out John Demjanjuk was definitely not Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka. But those who had pursued Demjanjuk for 15 years swearing for certain he was in Treblinka and not anywhere else, then declared – no, he was not in Treblinka, but rather he was in Sobibor. The process started all over again in 2002 and by 2009 Demjanjuk was once again on an airplane headed out of the country, this time to Germany."
"after attending several sessions of the Demjanjuk trial in Jerusalem, I publicly stated that I would not be surprised if there were several Ivan the Terribles at Treblinka. Most of the guards at Treblinka were Ukrainians, and Ivan--Ukranian for John--is the most common Ukranian name. Any brutal guard named Ivan would be called Ivan the Terrible.(3)
"Indeed, as Treblinka survivor Yehiel Reichman testified at Demjanjuk's trial, Demjanjuk's defense attorneys argued that there were no fewer than six Ivans at Treblinka, where the Ivan, dubbed "Ivan Grozny" (i.e., "Ivan the Terrible"), was stationed."
"'Ivan' Revisited: Was John Demjanjuk 'Innocent'?" by Nickell, Joe - Free Inquiry, Vol. 14, Issue 1, Winter 1993 | Questia, Your Online Research Library

“I am again and repeatedly an innocent victim of the Germans ... I find it an unbearable arrogance of Germany, that Germany is misusing me to turn the attention away from the war crimes committed by Germans, to make them forgotten and against the truth to claim that the true criminals of the Nazi crimes were me, the Ukrainians and the European neighbours of Nazi Germany.”

John Demjanjuk during his Munich Trial

 

[nhboy]

there was no CIA in the War Yrs

What's your point? During the war years the OSS collected and analyzed strategic information for the War department. At the end of the war the OSS was abolished and the National Security Act of 1947 established the CIA.


Interesting read from this source:

"Washington D.C., February 4, 2005 - Today the National Security Archive posted the CIA's secret documentary history of the U.S government's relationship with General Reinhard Gehlen, the German army's intelligence chief for the Eastern Front during World War II. At the end of the war, Gehlen established a close relationship with the U.S. and successfully maintained his intelligence network (it ultimately became the West German BND) even though he employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals. The use of Gehlen's group, according to the CIA history, Forging an Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1945-49, was a "double edged sword" that "boosted the Warsaw Pact's propaganda efforts" and "suffered devastating penetrations by the KGB." "

.....

"Some of the highlights from this secret CIA documentary history include:

A May 1, 1952 report detailing how Gehlen and his network were initially approached by U.S. army intelligence.

Two evaluations of the Gehlen operation from October 16 and 17, 1946, advising against the transfer of Gehlen's organization to CIG hands and questioning the value of the operation as a whole.

A March 19, 1948 memorandum from Richard Helms, noting Army pressure for the CIA to assume sponsorship of the Gehlen organization, and continued concern over the security problems inherent in the operation.

A December 17, 1948 report outlining the problems with the Gehlen organization, but ultimately recommending CIA assumption of the project. "

.....

"The documentation unearthed by the IWG reveals extensive relationships between former Nazi war criminals and American intelligence organizations, including the CIA. For example, current records show that at least five associates of the notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann worked for the CIA, 23 other Nazis were approached by the CIA for recruitment, and at least 100 officers within the Gehlen organization were former SD or Gestapo officers."