No Nazi war criminal living in this country has ever been deported for his crimes by the United States government and sent back to the country where he committed his crimes. Some 400 alleged Nazi war criminals, a 40 percent increase from the government’s previously announced figure, finally are now being investigated.
But the issue took three giant steps backward last month when Feodor Fedorenko’s petition for certiorari was granted by the Supreme Court, when the Frank Walus case was reversed and remanded by the Court of Appeals, and when the Karlis Detlavs case was decided against the government in Immigration Court in Baltimore.
Allan Ryan Jr., Walter Rockler’s designated successor to head the Justice Department’s efforts regarding alleged Nazi war criminals, has pledged to complete the 400 cases, and foresees some deportations. With these three setbacks and another decision against the government predicted shortly by most experts, however, the probability of any deportation is minimal for at least the next several years.
The grunting of certiorari to Federenko of Miami, and the Court of Appeals decision to reverse and remand the case of Walus of Chicago will have psychological and possible direct bearing on the Detlavs appeal, if the government decides to appeal the Detlavs decision. The Baltimore decision in favor of Detlavs, an admitted member of the Latvian Waffen SS, will probably be appealed by the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which is filing a preliminary notice of appeal.
Deilavs, accused by eyewitnesses of atrocities against the Jews of Latvia, including mass murders in the Rombula forest, admitted in court that he lied on his entrance visa regarding his activities.
LEGAL TANGLES OF THE CASES
The Detlavs decision did not follow the principle that lies in an entrance visa are sufficient reason for deportation, as established by the Court of Appeals in the Fedorenko case. Before the decision was made on the Detlavs case, Fedorenko’s petition for review by the U.S. Supreme Court was granted.
The case of Fedorenko, an admitted SS guard of Treblinka concentration camp, was decided against the government on July 25, 1978, although the defendant admitted lying on his entrance visa. This decision was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals (Fifth Circuit Court New Orleans) on June 28, 1979, and the trial judge was ordered to strip Fedorenko of citizenship. The Court of Appeals held that lying on his entrance visa was sufficient cause for denaturalization.
The defendant filed a motion for a re-hearing so the Appellate Court, which was denied on Aug. 13, 1979. On Feb. 19, 1980, the defendant’s petition for certiorari was granted by the U.S. Supreme Court, which will therefore review the Court of Appeals decision.
Until the Supreme Court decides on the Fedorenko case (which could take a year), it cannot be determined whether lying on a visa is sufficient grounds for deportation. If the government decides to appeal the Detlavs case on these grounds, the case will remain open until the Fedorenko decision.
Walus, a U.S. Citizen accused as a gestapo agent who participated in murders of Jewry and others, was ordered denaturalized by a U.S. District Court in Chicago. That decision has now been reversed and remanded by the 7the Circuit Court of Appeals. Experts believe this new development in the Walus case will have a psychological effect on a possible Detlavs appeal.
PUBLICIZING WAR CRIMINALS IN THE U.S.
The issue of Nazi war criminals in America was first publicized to the American masses for the first time through a Jan. 13, 1980 ABC-TV network documentary, “Escape from Justice: Nazi War Criminals in America,” viewed by an estimated 30 million people; then by a feature article, “Were These Men Killers for the Nazis?” in the January-February Life magazine.
But the presence of Nazi war criminals he case back to the 1940s. At least one case was known to the government as early as 1949, when Yugoslavia requested the extradition of Andrija Artukovic. He is charged, while Minister of Interior of the Nazi paper state of Croatia, with signing documents that resulted in the mass murder of some 750,000 people, including Gypsies, Serbs, Croats, and 68,000 Jews. (Artukovic is still living freely in Surfside, Calif.)
As Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal has said: “The Cold War had no winter. The only winners were the Nazi war criminals. For 12 years, we had a closed season for these crimes, and during that time they escaped from Europe to South America, Arab countries and Spain (and the United States). Only after the Eichmann trial in 1961 did a new search begin.”
Because of Cold War competition for scientists, the U.S. government actually solicited some Nazis in the 1950s, through such programs as “Project Paperclip,” brought them here, and employed them. Other Nazi war criminals filtered in as displaced persons, posing as legitimate refugees. Until the mid-1970s, with few exceptions, no one challenged the government’s virtual neglect, and, in some cases, deliberate obstruction, regarding the presence of Nazi war criminals living here, according to numerous documented reports. Some alleged Nazi war criminals were even used by American intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, FBI, State Department, and others, in Cold War activities.
This was confirmed by a 1978 study by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. “No one with the slightest pretension of knowledgeableness can overstate the powerful, if not ultimately total role an obstreperous American intelligence community may continue to play,” Nazi war criminal expert and journalist Charles. Allen Jr. wrote in the September-October, 1979 issue of The Jewish Veteran.
This picture changed in 1973-1974, when several events brought the issue into the open: Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan, a Queers housewife and former concentration camp guard supervisor, was extradited to West Germany to stand trial; Vincent Schiano and Anthony Devito, officials of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, accusing that agency of years of cover-up on the subject of Nazi war criminals, left their jobs; and Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D.NY) and Rep. Joshua Eilberg (D.Pa.) of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and International Law, took on active interest in the issue and pushed it in Congress.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
