Behind the Headlines the Role of Soviet-supplied Evidence in Cases of Nazi War Criminals

The validity of Soviet-supplied evidence of Nazi war crimes in the Karl Linnas and Ivan Demjanjuk cases has been contested by defense lawyers, East European emigre groups and conservative political figures like Patrick Buchanan and William Buckley despite experts’ testimony that the Soviets have never provided a forged document in such proceedings.

At various stages, these interested parties vocally protested the deportations of Linnas to Estonia several weeks ago and Demjanjuk to Israel to face war crimes charges, claiming the Soviet evidence was unreliable, forged or unacceptable.

In fact, Soviet evidence has been widely used in war crimes trials for the past 40 years, including the Nuremberg trials. There has never been a case of fabrication or perjury, said Eli Rosenbaum, World Jewish Congress (WJC) general counsel and a former prosecutor for the Office of Special Investigations (OSI).

FABRICATION IS IMPOSSIBLE

Moreover, U.S. documents intelligence experts have said it is impossible to fabricate the kinds of documents the Soviets have provided. The Red Army captured millions of documents the Nazis left behind or didn’t have time to burn.

Rosenbaum added that about 95 percent of the documents the U.S. requests from the Soviets do not aid prosecutions and often exculpate known Nazi collaborators.

Early this week, a Tel Aviv University Sovietologist, Matityahu Meisel, testified in the Demjanjuk trial that he has never come across a forged Russian document and that the military documents from the war period are “correct, real and authentic.”

Beyond their role in opposing specific evidence in these two cases, the emigre groups have organized opposition campaigns to all attempts by the Justice Department to find and prosecute suspected war criminals now residing in this country, according to Rosenbaum, who monitors the groups.

They also have access to officials in the White House and State Department and have claimed to be in possession of a classified Justice Department list of suspected Nazi war criminals under investigation in the U.S.

WAR CRIMINALS’ OWN ADMISSIONS

But the challenges to Soviet evidence have faded against the backdrop of Linnas’ and Demjanjuk’s own admissions which provided compelling evidence in their denaturalization trials of their links with atrocities of the Nazi regime.

When a federal prosecutor in Demjanjuk’s original 1981 denaturalization trial in Cleveland asked the defendant if the Germans had given him a blood-type tatoo under his left arm, Demjanjuk answered “yes.” Only SS men received the blood-type tatoos under the left arm near the armpit.

The prosecutor then asked Demjanjuk if he still had the tatoo. He replied “no.” And what happened to it? the prosecutor probed. “I took it out,” he replied. Demjanjuk then told the court that he had carved the tatoo out of his arm and only a scar remained. “So you maimed yourself, is that right?” the prosecutor asked. “So it appears,” the defendant answered.

In that court’s decision to strip Demjanjuk of his U.S. citizenship, it cited the defendant’s own admission that he had a blood-type tatoo, only issued to persons affiliated with the German SS.

Similarly, Karl Linnas admitted to his neighbors and reporters that he served as a guard at a camp in Tartu, Estonia, and that he served in the collaborationist Estonian Home Guard.

Both defendants were stripped of their U.S. citizenship and deported to face war crimes charges in other countries. In both cases, U.S. courts found the evidence presented in trials and appeals sufficient proof that Linnas and Demjanjuk committed war crimes and lied to gain entry into and ultimately become citizens of the U.S.

CORROBORATION OF WESTERN SOURCES

In both the Linnas and Demjanjuk cases, the Soviet-supplied evidence corroborated the great majority of evidence which came from Western sources, Rosenbaum said.

The main Soviet-supplied evidence in the Linnas case consisted of testimony of Estonian cohorts who also served in the Tartu camp and prisoner transfer documents signed by the camp chief — Karl Linnas. The U.S. courts found these documents to be undeniably authentic.

The Soviet evidence in the Demjanjuk trial, an SS identity card which places him at the Sobibor concentration camp, showed the court little more than Demjanjuk himself admitted. On his application for a visa to enter the U.S. in 1951, Demjanjuk listed his residence between 1934 and 1943 as Sobibor where 300,000 people, mostly Jews, were killed in the death camp. Sobibor was razed in a prisoner uprising in 1943.

The only evidence that Demjanjuk served as a guard at Treblinka is eye witness testimony.

SKEPTICISM OF SOVIET EVIDENCE

Buchanan, the recently resigned White House Director of Communications, Buckley, a conservative columnist and editor, and Attorney General Edwin Meese are among the public figures skeptical of Soviet evidence in the two cases.

Buchanan, in a March 31 editorial in the New York Times wrote, “Why do a handful of us insist upon Mr. Demjanjuk’s innocence? Because the only documentary evidence ever produced is Soviet-supplied — a Nazi identification card from Trawniki, the like of which has never been seen again — and because ‘eyewitnesses’ against him have contradicted themselves and each other under oath.”

Buchanan also publicly questioned the need for OSI at all. In a television interview with Allan Ryan, former OSI head, Buchanan said, “You’ve got a great atrocity that occurred 35, 45 years ago, okay? Why continue to invest … put millions of dollars into investigating that? I mean, why keep a special office to investigate Nazi war crimes?… Why not abolish your office?”

Buchanan then added that he saw no “singularity” about the Holocaust that would merit the maintenance of OSI.

Buckley rallied to Linnas’ defense in a New York Daily News column on Dec. 12, 1986. “The entire episode is judicially revolting,” he wrote. “How is it possible to try someone on the basis of Soviet testimony which was written before the trial was actually conducted? Even if someone had films showing Linnas as a guard at a concentration camp in the early 40’s, what is the appropriate penalty in 1986?” Both Buchanan and Buckley have reflected the same concerns expressed by East European emigre groups that have fought the extraditions of Linnas and Demjanjuk and funded their defense.

“I consider the Soviet evidence issue to be a smokescreen employed by the Baltic and Ukrainian groups and the radical right to conceal the real goal which is to bring Nazi prosecutions to an end,” Rosenbaum said. Additionally, Buckley, Buchanan and many from the extreme right oppose extraditions to the Soviet Union and use of Soviet evidence out of a blind hatred for the Soviet Union, Rosenbaum said.

VIEWS OF EMIGRE GROUPS

The Justice Department first became aware of the emigre groups in 1983, Rosenbaum said. The rise of the groups came in direct response to the establishment and activities of OSI and the entire network had no apparent purpose other than to oppose prosecution of Nazi war criminals. The groups are based in cities with large emigre populations; Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia and New York.

The two major organizations, the Coalition for Constitutional Justice and Security (CCJS) based in Mission Viejo near Los Angeles, and Americans for Due Process (ADP) in Long Island, N.Y., met recently with officials in the White House, State Department and National Security Council, according to Rosenbaum.

Representatives of the emigre groups also met recently with Meese to discuss the Linnas case. Meese came under fire from Jewish organizations for his unsuccessful attempts to secure refuge for Linnas in Panama and other countries before he deported him to Estonia several weeks ago. Rosenbaum said he monitors the emigre groups’ publications with the help of Jewish Holocaust survivors who are fluent in Latvian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian.

The groups advocate the statute of limitations and amnesty for Nazi war criminals and have thousands of financial supporters for defense funds and special lawyers. They urge repeal of the 1978 law allowing deportation of war criminals.

Additionally, the CCSJ claimed in one publication that they have obtained the OSI’s list of subjects of war crimes investigations which contains hundreds of names, Rosenbaum said. The publication said the document, which is classified information, was leaked to the organization by officials in the Justice Department.

“I shudder to think what this organization has done with this subject list,” Rosenbaum said, adding the list could indicate who should flee the country to avoid prosecution.

“The Baltic and Ukrainian groups who wanted to stop these prosecutions don’t like the fact that these prosecutions are educating the American people that the Holocaust was not perpetrated by the Germans alone but depended heavily on the assistance of willing collaborators throughout Eastern and Western Europe,” Rosenbaum said.