Police continued their investigation over the weekend into the shooting of Boleslavs Maikovskis, a 73-year-old Latvian immigrant accused of having been a police commandant in Nazi-occupied Latvia who rounded up Jews for execution at the Dwinsk ghetto in 1941 and 1942.
Maikovskis was shot Friday at his home in Mineola, L.I. by unidentified assailants. He was questioned by detectives yesterday at Nassau Hospital in Mineola where he is recovering from a bullet wound of the right knee. His condition is described as stable. Officials of the Jewish Defense League, whose members have been picketing Maikovskis’ home, have denied any connection with the shooting, but lauded the attack.
Police reported Maikovskis was shot as he stood in the kitchen of his home shortly after returning from church Friday. The police said one bullet of eight fired through a back porch door window ripped through his right kneecap and went out through his thigh, severing an artery. He was shot by a white male, according to a police account, who escaped with another man in a white van.
Bonnie Pechter, JDL director, said here that the JDL was not responsible but that “we are very happy it happened. We are sorry he is alive.” A police spokesman said that a JDL “insignia” had been found on the back porch of the Miakovskis home near the door through which the shots were fired.
AJ CONGRESS OFFICIAL RAPS SHOOTING
Phil Baum, associate director of the American Jewish Congress, denounced the shooting. He said such violence “beclouds the issue and inspires sympathy for those accused of heinous crimes. It diverts public anger and lends plausibility to the claim of vindictive persecution.” Baum added that “those who want to really see war criminals punished must join in condemning this cruel, pointless and stupid act.”
Maikovskis, who was sentenced to death in absentia by a Soviet court in 1965, has been fighting deportation by the U.S. Naturalization and Immigration Service, which claims he lied about his role in the pro-Nazi Latvian police force to gain entrance to the United States.
In deportation hearings on Oct. 20, 1977, he was accused of helping to assemble 600 Jewish children and march them from the Dwinsk ghetto. The children were never seen again. In two years of federal hearings, the retired carpenter invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to testify. He came to the U.S. in 1951. Maikovskis’ appeal from an INS order that he must testify will be heard next month in the federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the second circuit. His deportation hearing has been suspended pending the outcome of that appeal.
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