Alleged War Criminal Tries to Counter U.S. Government Charges

Wolodymir Osidach took the witness stand in his denaturalization trial in Federal Court here today trying to counter U.S. government charges that his wartime activities were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews in the Nazi-occupied Ukraine and that he falsified this information when he applied to enter the U.S. in 1949 and again when he became a naturalized citizen in 1963.

If U.S. Federal District Court Judge Louis Bechtle, who is hearing the case without a jury, finds Osidach, 76, of Philadelphia, guilty of misrepresenting his past, the defendant could be stripped of his citizenship and force deportation proceedings.

Osidach’s defense attorney, Louis Konowal, argued in his opening statement before a courtroom filled to capacity, that his client was no more than a clerk in the Ukrainian police and that he had nothing to do with the rounding up, imprisonment or murder of Jews. “The Jewish people were the ones guarding the Jews,” Konowal said. “It is embarrassing to the Jews but it’s true.”

The trial opened with prosecutor Neal Sher, deputy director of the Office of Special Investigations in the U.S. Department of Justice, stating that, according to the law, a certificate of naturalization must be cancelled if it can be shown to have been illegally procured by wilfull concealment or misrepresentation.

Osidach, he contended, had already admitted at pre-trial hearings that he concealed his pre-war arrest and prison record, as well as his wartime activities, to gain entry into the United States. When Osidach applied for entry under the Displaced Persons Act in 1949, Sher charged, he maintained he had been a dairy technician in Tomaszow, Poland from 1936 through 1944.

That, the government insists, was a lie. Osidach has since conceded that he was a dairy technician “for only a few weeks in 1941. “He voluntarily left that job the payment charged to enter the Ukrainian police in the small town of Rawa Ruska.

He later rose to the rank of police chief. I couldn’t say I was working as a policeman,” Osidach testified through an interpreter. “I was taken to the police office because I knew German, Polish and Ukrainian and I knew how to type …. I considered myself a Ukrainian clerk.”

Osidach, a staunch Ukrainian nationalist, has asserted that his pre-war arrest record stems from his anti-Communist activities with the outlawed Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and that the current denaturalization proceedings are a continuation of the harassment.

The prosecution will call witnesses from the United States, Canada and Israel to show that Osidach’s wartime role was more than that of a clerk who had little or no contact with his German superiors. The prosecution also intends to utilize video-taped testimony from witnesses in the Soviet Union.

TESTIMONY OF FIRST WITNESS

The first prosecution witness, Raul Hilberg, professor of political science at the University of Vermont and author of “The Destruction of the European Jews,” testified on this point. “Would it be possible for anyone with that rank (police chief) … and in that village (Rawa Ruska) …could have avoided working with the Germans?” asked Rodney Smith, one of the Justice Department prosecutors.

“In my opinion,” replied Hilberg, who was granted “expert witness status,” “it would have been utterly impossible not to have become involved” Hilberg also identified documents listing Osidach as “Hauptwachtmann” (police chief) in Ruska during 1942-43 and naming 10 officers in his command as well as other papers submitted as Osidach’s medical benefits and employment insurance forms while on the Nazi payroll.

Tadeusz Sadowski, of Silver Spring, Md a specialist on Polish and Russian law for the Liberacy of Congress, also testified for the prosecution He identified and validated documents attesting to Osidach’s arrest and trial for OUN activities in pre-war Poland.