While accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk no longer captures headlines, legal maneuvering surrounding his case continues at both the state and federal levels.
The Ohio Supreme Court heard oral arguments May 1 in the case of Seven Hills vs. Aryan Nations that concerns limits imposed on protestors outside Demjanjuk’s home.
The American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to lift a permanent injunction by a local judge banning simultaneous protesting by groups with opposing viewpoints in front of Demjanjuk’s home in the western Cleveland suburb of Seven Hills.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department is seeking to deport Demjanjuk because he lied about his Nazi past when he immigrated to the United States in 1958.
The state case originated when the city of Seven Hills, anticipating Demjanjuk’s return to his home after seven years in an Israeli prison, enacted a total ban on residential picketing.
Demjanjuk returned to the area in September 1993 after Israel’s Supreme Court acquitted him on charges that he was the notorious Treblinka guard “Ivan the Terrible.”
But the court also found compelling evidence that Demjanjuk was a SS guard at the Sobibor death camp and other Nazi concentration camps.
Protesters in front of his home at that time included area Holocaust survivors and their supporters, led by New York Rabbi Avi Weiss, national president of Coalition for Jewish Concerns-AMCHA.
Other demonstrators, who supported Demjanjuk’s claims of innocence, included local members of the white supremacist Aryan Nations and Ku Klux Klan organizations, and members of the Ukrainian community.
On Dec. 15, 1993, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Daniel Gaul struck down he city’s ban, but issued an injunction barring groups with opposing viewpoints from demonstrating at the same time.
Both sides appealed and, on Feb. 16, 1994, the court of appeals upheld Gaul’s decision to strike down the city ordinance and retain his ban on simultaneous protesting.
The Ohio Supreme Court accepted the case for review last July.
For the ACLU the simultaneous protest ban limits speech in a way that in contrary to the First Amendment.
“It is important to have people out there to bear witness,” said Christine Link, executive director of ACLU of Ohio. “You don’t want to have one side out there at a time in a vacuum.”
Until last week there had been no protests in front of the Demjanjuk home since 1994, according to the Seven Hills police-department. A protest marking the first anniversary of Demjanjuk’s return, led by Weiss, took place on Sept. 22, 1994.
Zev Harel, president of Kol Israel, an organization comprised mainly of Holocaust survivors, said his group stopped demonstrating in front of the Demjanjuk home when no one but survivors came to protest.
Weiss returned to Cleveland on May 2 to lead a protest of local Jewish day school children at Demjanjuk’s home.
Link says that the seven-member court, which is an elected body, will either release its decision right before or sometime after November elections.
Weiss also led a group of survivors demonstrating last week outside the federal court house in Cleveland.
The survivor community has been discouraged by the slow pace of the legal process in reopening the denaturalization proceedings against Demjanjuk, said Harel.
Although Demjanjuk was stripped of his citizenship in 1981 and extradited to Israel in 1986, the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit Court did not interfere with his return to Cleveland in 1993 so that he might assist his attorneys in an investigation of misconduct on the part of the prosecution.
At the time, the U.S. Justice Department filed a motion with presiding Judge Frank Battisti to reopen denaturalization proceedings.
Since Battisti’s unexpected death in October 1994, the Demjanjuk case has been reassigned twice. It is now in the hands of Judge Paul Matia.
The judge has scheduled a status hearing on the case May 14 to set the deadline for briefs and court dates.
“Demjanjuk was allowed back into this country pending a decision on whether he would be deported for having lied about this Nazi background on his immigration application,” Weiss said. “It’s been almost three years and nothing has happened.”
Judge Matia is also the presiding judge in the case of Cleveland resident Algimantas Dailide who, like Demjanjuk, has been accused of lying about a Nazi past in order to obtain U.S. citizenship. Dailide’s trial is set to begin in November.
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