June 21



GERMANY:

Holocaust memorial considers rules


The American architect who designed Berlin's new Holocaust memorial has
urged German authorities not to impose rules that would restrict the
behavior of visitors.

A debate about whether to impose restrictions was sparked after some
parents allowed their children to run among the 2,711 gray slabs.

Other youngsters climbed on the pillars and jumped from one to another.

But Eisenman told an audience at Berlin's Jewish Museum on Monday night it
was up to people to decide themselves how to reflect on the murder of six
million European Jews by the Nazi government more than 60 years ago.

For example, he said the noise of children playing among the slabs for him
recalled "the sounds of life in a Jewish neighborhood in the middle of the
city," according to The Associated Press.

"I love the way in which Berliners have taken to the field of slabs and
how the people are using it," he said.

"Here is the place and the time for everybody to behave as they see fit."

As the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was being constructed,
Eisenman opposed adding an anti-graffiti coating to the slabs, but
eventually relented.

His initial opposition to anti-graffiti paint was not just because the
chemical was made by Degussa, makers of the Zyklon B gas used in the gas
chambers during the war, a controversy in itself.

''I didn't want the graffiti coating, because I think vandalism is an
expression of the city.

"We have it in American cities, and I think in a certain way it's
positive. It's an outlet," Eisenman said.

(source: CNN)





USA:

US Judge Accused Nazi Demjanjuk Can Be Deported


A federal immigration judge ruled that John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian
immigrant and retired auto worker, can be deported from the United States
because he served as an armed guard at several Nazi camps during World War
II, the Justice Department said on Monday.

Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael Creppy ruled that Demjanjuk's
actions during the war ``prevented the escape of prisoners being held
captive and who were left at the disposition of the Nazis,'' the Justice
Department said in a statement.

Creppy ruled that Demjanjuk, 85, was therefore removable from the United
States as a foreigner who participated in Nazi-sponsored persecution on
the basis of race, religion, national origin or political opinion.

The judge has not yet decided where Demjanjuk will be sent. Demjanjuk,
whose case has been in the U.S. courts for three decades, lives in the
Cleveland, Ohio, area. His next hearing is scheduled for June 30 in
Cleveland.

A federal judge previously revoked Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship on
multiple grounds, including his ``willing'' service in a unit ``dedicated
to exploiting and exterminating'' Jewish civilians in Nazi-occupied
Poland.

In 2002, following a trial, a federal judge in Ohio ruled that the
government had proved that Demjanjuk was an armed guard at Sobibor,
Majdanek and Flossenburg concentration camps.

A federal appeals court affirmed the decision and the case was then
brought before the immigration judge to approve deportation.

``John Demjanjuk's role in helping to doom thousands of Jews to
annihilation in Sobibor's gas chambers renders him singularly unworthy of
continued residence in this country,'' said Eli Rosenbaum, director of the
Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations.

``His participation in the ghastly crimes of the Holocaust renders him
unfit to remain here, and the government will seek to remove him as
expeditiously as possible,'' he said.

Demjanjuk has denied he was ever a death camp guard, saying he was in the
Soviet Army but spent much of World War II as a German prisoner.

(source: Reuters)

*****************************


Judge: Demjanjuk can be deported


John Demjanjuk, the Seven Hills man suspected of being a Nazi war
criminal, is a big step closer to deportation.

Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael Creppy ruled Thursday that Demjanjuk,
85, can be deported based on his service as a Nazi death camp guard during
World War II. Demjanjuk has until June 30 to appeal.

In 2002, a federal court found that Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian national, was a
sentry at three concentration camps and lied about his wartime past when
he entered the United States in 1952. The federal courts stripped him of
his U.S. citizenship.

In December he lost his appeals to regain citizenship, paving the way for
deportation.

Creppy's June 16 opinion said Demjanjuk was removable from the United
States "by clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence."

Creppy said the federal courts showed Demjanjuk prevented the escape of
prisoners held by the Nazis, leaving them to abuse and almost certain
death. At one of the camps, the judge said, thousands of Jews were
murdered by asphyxiation.

Demjanjuk's attorney, Thomas Elliot, called the deportation proceedings
unfair and said the retired autoworker has been the victim of mistaken
identity for 28 years.

Elliot said Creppy appears to be biased because he wrote law review
articles about aggressive prosecution of war criminals. Creppy appointed
himself to the deportation case.

Elliot plans to ask Creppy to step aside at the next hearing, June 30,
when the court will decide to which country Demjanjuk will be sent.

The case began in 1977, when the Justice Department, citing a Nazi
identification card with Demjanjuk's name, birth date and parentage, asked
a federal judge to revoke Demjanjuk's citizenship.

Officials in the former Soviet Union provided the card to investigators,
saying that Soviet soldiers found it in a Nazi training camp. The Justice
Department found nearly a dozen survivors of the Nazi death camp at
Treblinka who identified Demjanjuk as "Ivan," a Ukrainian guard who
tortured Jewish inmates and operated gas chambers that exterminated an
estimated 900,000 people.

In 1981, Demjanjuk was stripped of his citizenship by a federal judge. Two
years later, while Demjanjuk was being considered for deportation to
Ukraine, Israel requested his extradition to stand trial on war-crimes
charges. A three-judge panel in Israel found Demjanjuk guilty of war
crimes and sentenced him to death.

In 1991, his lawyers produced testimony from 37 Treblinka death camp
guards and forced laborers who identified another man, Ivan Marczenko, as
"Ivan the Terrible."

In July 1993, Israel's Supreme Court overturned Demjanjuk's conviction. He
was released from prison on Sept. 22, 1993, and returned to his family in
Seven Hills.

In 1998, his U.S. citizenship was restored, and the Justice Department
began anew its efforts to revoke his citizenship and deport him.

(source: Cleveland Plain Dealer)






BRITAIN:

Nazi war criminals living in Britain total 'more than 200'


The Home Office and the police are investigating claims that more than 200
Nazi war criminals are living in Britain, The Independent on Sunday can
reveal. The alleged suspects include 75 Auschwitz camp guards who went
missing after the Second World War and who are believed to have fled to
this country.

The Metropolitan police have been passed details by the Home Office of
"several hundred" members of the SS Galician division, which has been
blamed for numerous humanitarian atrocities and who may be alive in
Britain. They also have the names of the Auschwitz guards which were
uncovered by an amateur historian. Dr Stephen Ankier stumbled across the
names while researching what happened to family members during the Second
World War.

It is understood that some of the suspects from the SS Galician division,
also known as the 14th Waffen-SS and largely made up of Ukrainians, may
only have been teenagers, too young and too lowly to have been included on
official military lists.

This fresh investigation was revealed by Tony McNulty, the immigration
minister, in a parliamentary answer. The British government has been
criticised in the past for failing to ensure that Second World War crime
suspects were brought to justice. Only one man, Anthony Sawoniuk, has been
prosecuted in this country for Nazi war crimes. Found guilty in 1999 at
the Old Bailey of murdering 18 Jews and now in his eighties, he is serving
two life sentences.

Both the Jewish human rights organisation, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre,
and the former USSR passed on lists of suspects to the British government,
but in 1999 the Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit said that all its
lines of inquiry had been exhausted and that the unit was being disbanded.

Inquiries are now dealt with by the Crimes Against Humanity Unit, part of
the anti-terror squad. Andrew Dismore MP, who passed the Met details of
the Auschwitz guards, called for the hunt for alleged Nazi war criminals
to be funded before it is too late.

The Labour MP for Hendon said: "These people should never be allowed to
sleep easy in their beds."

(source: The Independent)