A New Jersey based organization of Americans of Eastern European descent has explicitly called for the immediate termination of U.S. government efforts to investigate and prosecute suspected Nazi war criminals, the World Jewish Congress revealed Friday.
The New Jersey chapter of the Washington, D.C.-based National Confederation of American Ethnic groups is currently distributing a booklet, a copy of which was obtained by the WJC, in which Americans of Eastern European heritage are urged “to challenge the very existence of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations” (OSI), adding that “common sense and logic dictates that the OSI has no basis for existence.”
According to the booklet, entitled “Victory Without Fear,” the OSI is actually barred from taking any legal action whatsoever against Nazi war criminals in the United States, because federal legislation enacted in 1957 granted a blanket amnesty to Eastern European immigrants who lied on their U.S. immigration applications in order to avoid repatriation to the Soviet Union.
A WJC spokesperson, however, dismissed this proposition as “ludicrous.” and noted that it has been uniformly rejected by U.S. courts.
ACCUSATIONS IN THE BOOK LET
The booklet accuses the OSI of “spawning prejudice and violence” and declares that the special Justice Department unit poses a “grave danger to Eastern Europeans in America” and to “our positions among the honored nations.”
The booklet defends various accused Nazi war criminals as “victims” of U.S. government “persecution,” and asserts that persons who served the Nazis as anti-Semitic propagandists are actually protected by “Constitutional guarantees of free speech and expression.”
In what WJC vice president Kalman Sultanik characterized as “a sinister incitement to obstruction of justice,” the booklet suggests that the OSI could be effectively incapacitated if enough people write to the tiny Justice Department unit, asking for information. “Now, can you imagine 35 million Americans of European heritage sending the OSI such a letter?” the publication asks.
The vigorous campaign by various emigre organizations to cripple the OSI was first exposed by the World Jewish Congress in April 1985. According to Sultanik, who is also a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, this campaign “continues to grow at an alarming fate.”
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.
