German consular officials here provided a visa in 1987 to Boleslavs Maikovskis, a Nazi war criminal, allowing him to escape deportation to the Soviet Union, where he had been sentenced to death, according to sworn testimony given by Maikovskis’ former attorney, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith has learned.
Ivars Berzins, testifying recently at the Maikovskis trial now under way in Germany, said that in 1987 he met with the German consul general in New York and “put the cards on the table” that Maikovskis stood to be deported to the Soviet Union.
Berzins said the consul general contacted the German Foreign Ministry in Bonn, and the consul then helped get Maikovskis a visa to Germany “for humanitarian reasons.”
New York City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman, who as a U.S. congresswoman authored the bill that allows the United States to deport Nazi war criminals, said, “The allegations made by Boleslavs Maikovskis’ attorney, if true, raise serious questions about whether the German government has been involved in protecting Nazi war criminals.”
Maikovskis, who lived in Mineola, N.Y., was ruled deportable in 1984 for having lied about his wartime activities as a Nazi police chief in Latvia when he entered the United States from Germany in 1951.
The Soviet Union, which sentenced him in absentia to death in 1965 for massacring civilians in Latvia during the war, had for years unsuccessfully sought his extradition from the United States. No extradition treaty exists between the two countries.
The Office of Special Investigations of the U.S. Justice Department has tried to have him deported to Germany, but German officials originally refused to accept him because the crimes had not been committed on German soil.
ADL DEMANDS AN EXPLANATION
Maikovskis’ disappearance was discovered in October 1988, a full year after he left the United States for West Germany to settle in Munster, a city where many Latvians live. He traveled on a Latvian passport with a German visa.
After much publicity and agitation by ADL and Jewish activists and Holocaust survivors, German authorities arrested Maikovskis and charged him with war crimes.
The trial, which started in January 1990, is being held every Monday and Thursday in Munster. Already, Germany has spent millions of dollars to prosecute the 87-year-old Maikovskis, including interviewing witnesses in Latvia and the United States, according to Elliott Welles of ADL’s Nazi Task Force.
Earlier this month, ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, sent off an angry letter to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, saying, “Since no trial was planned in Germany at the time, this visa was apparently not with the intention of calling him to account for his crimes, but rather to enable him to escape being brought to justice.”
Added Foxman, “We believe the conduct of the German government in this matter demands an explanation, and those responsible should be severely reprimanded.”
Berzins, who practices law on Long Island, confirmed his court testimony to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and added he could not recall the name of the German official he dealt with in the consulate here.
“When I spoke with the gentleman at the German Consulate, I told him that Maikovskis had a death sentence against him in the Soviet Union and a trial was held. And I told him he was deportable and he has no more appeals left, and as far as I know, he stands a strong chance of being shot” in the Soviet Union explained Berzins.
Officials at the German Consulate here said they had no information on the case. But the acting director of the German Consulate, Axel John, said, “We don’t give visas here.”
Menachem Rosensaft, founder of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, said that if Berzins’ statements are true, “I would be shocked.
“But the tactics of some of the counsels for some of the Nazi war criminals,” he said, “are such over the years that I don’t want to malign the Germans, as it were, or attack them without having full confirmation.
“The fact that Maikovskis is on trial is a positive development,” he said. “The fact that he wasn’t deported to the Soviet Union is unfortunate, but on balance, it is better that he is in Germany on trial than sitting in Long Island and enjoying old age,” said Rosensaft.
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.
