The director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI) said here yesterday that while the judicial process for securing a conviction against an alleged Nazi war criminal in the United States is “far from perfect,” it nevertheless remain essential to the rights of all citizens that the process be upheld and applied judicially to those accused.
Asserting that citizenship is “our most precious right” the director of the OSI, Allan Ryan, Jr. said, “Citizenship is not and should not be revokable by order of the Department of Justice, no matter how conscientious the official, no matter how despicable the defendant … The machinery is far from perfect but the principle is essential.
“The rule of law is in the end what distinguishes a just government from the government of tyranny that threatened to engulf the world in the 30s and 40s,” Ryan told some 100 persons at a reception honoring his efforts, OSI deputy director Neal Sher, and the 48-member staff of the OSI for its continued efforts to prosecute war criminals residing in the U.S.
Sher and Ryan were presented with silver medals from Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial to the Holocaust victims, by the American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates and Nazi Victims, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. The medals were inscribed with the motto of Yad Vashem, “We shall give them an everlasting name,” a vow to perpetuate the memory of the martyrs. In honor of the 48-staff members of the OSI, a special contribution was made to the Jewish National Fund to be used to plant trees in Israel.
According to Ryan, who was named director of the OSI in April, 1980, the U.S. “must continue to extend the rule of law to protect the elemental rights of those we despise.” He said that it is because of this careful application of all legal rights to the accused, including legal representation, cross-examination, appeals process, that the OSI has been successful.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
