Neal Sher, director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), confirmed that various emigre groups in the United States were conducting a “vociferous” campaign in Washington aimed at having the OSI abolished.
Sher said in a telephone interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that various emigre groups have “fanned out to the Executive branch and Congress” in order to press their case. He did not identify the groups.
Sher was contacted following the release yesterday of a report by the World Jewish Congress charging that various Baltic and Ukrainian emigre groups and activists have engaged in “an intensive and shocking campaign aimed at undermining the Justice Department’s Nazi prosecution program.” (See April 3 Bulletin, P. 3.)
According to Sher, contacted at his Washington offices, the emigre groups “don’t like the fact that the OSI deals with the Soviets” when seeking its main eye witnesses to atrocities committed by alleged war criminals.
Sher said that the emigre groups also object to the pursuit by the OSI of members of the emigrant community for activities that occurred during World War II. “I suspect this does not sit well with people the fact that there is blood on the hands of many of these collaborators,” Sher said. The OSI, established in 1979, is the Justice Department’s unit responsible for investigating, and when necessary, taking legal action against U.S. residents suspected of complicity in Nazi war crimes.
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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.
