John Demjanjuk deported

aristotle

Veteran Expediter
Got to love those Nazi hunters. 89 year old John Demjanjuk will face a show trial in Germany, if he can live through the trip there.

WW2 has been over for 64 years. This twisted sense of vengeance and persecution concerning a feeble old man, who is likely innocent, brings discredit upon his tormentors. Will someone tell these people the war is over?
 

DougTravels

Not a Member
On the surface, I would have to agree with you. I am not sure what evidence there is against him but his age should be a non factor. We want Bin Ladin whether he is 89 or 189 right.
 

moose

Veteran Expediter
You are missing the big picture here , this is not personal , with not many around any more , soon all we will have left are videos and recording .
this is one of the last real opportunity's WE will have to hear it from first source.
this is about EDUCATING the next generation , not that we did so well with this one.
i shore hope there will be a live coverage of that important event ,available for every American and family .
i know i will be watching.
this is a good thing.



Moose.
 

aristotle

Veteran Expediter
On the surface, I would have to agree with you. I am not sure what evidence there is against him but his age should be a non factor. We want Bin Ladin whether he is 89 or 189 right.

By most accounts, Demjanjuk was a low-level soldier during WW2. He cannot be placed on par with Osama bin Laden.

Demjanjuk was a uniformed soldier. bin Laden is a terrorist not entitled to the rights, privileges or indulgences granted to soldiers.

It is a common mistake of the left to draw an analogy or claim moral equivalency where none exists.
 

DougTravels

Not a Member
By most accounts, Demjanjuk was a low-level soldier during WW2. He cannot be placed on par with Osama bin Laden.

Demjanjuk was a uniformed soldier. bin Laden is a terrorist not entitled to the rights, privileges or indulgences granted to soldiers.

It is a common mistake of the left to draw an analogy or claim moral equivalency where none exists.

Who claimed moral equivalency? I'm just saying that he will get his trial, his age is a non-factor.
 

DougTravels

Not a Member
Here is an article on him, if what they allege is true hang him high!!

CLEVELAND — Deported by the United States, retired autoworker John Demjanjuk was carried in a wheelchair onto a jet that departed Monday evening for Germany, which wants to try him as an accessory to the murders of Jews and others at a Nazi death camp in World War II.

Demjanjuk, 89, arrived in an ambulance at Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport after spending several hours with U.S. immigration officials at a downtown federal building. Airport commissioner Khalid Bahhur confirmed Demjanjuk was on the plane and that its destination is Germany.

The deportation came four days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider Demjanjuk's request to block deportation and about 3 1/2 years after he was last ordered deported.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk (pronounced dem-YAHN'-yuk) is wanted on a Munich arrest warrant that accuses him of 29,000 counts of accessory to murder as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The legal case spans three decades.

A German Justice Ministry spokesman, Ulrich Staudigl, said the retired autoworker was expected to be in Germany by Tuesday.

Demjanjuk denies Germany's accusations, saying he was held by the Germans as a Soviet prisoner of war and was never a camp guard. Demjanjuk's family fought deportation, arguing he is in poor health and might not survive the trans-Atlantic journey.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, a founder of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Demjanjuk deserves to be punished and that this will probably be the last trial of someone accused of Nazi war crimes.

"His work at the Sobibor death camp was to push men, women and children into the gas chamber," Hier said in a statement. "He had no mercy, no pity and no remorse for the families whose lives he was destroying."

The center was established to locate and help bring to justice Nazi war criminals.

The deportation capped a day in which Demjanjuk said goodbye to his family and was visited by two priests at his home in Seven Hills, a Cleveland suburb.

He then slipped quietly into an ambulance parked in his driveway, his family members standing at the edge of the garage and holding up a floral-patterned bedsheet to block the view of reporters and photographers across the street.

Earlier Monday, his son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said an appeal in a U.S. court would go ahead even if his father isn't in the country.

"Given the history of this case and not a shred of evidence that he ever hurt one person let alone murdered anyone anywhere, this is inhuman even if the courts have said it is lawful," Demjanjuk Jr. said.

Also Monday, a Berlin court rejected an appeal aimed at preventing deportation.

Once in Germany, Demjanjuk will be brought before a judge and formally charged. He will also be given the opportunity to make a statement to the court, in keeping with standard procedure, Staudigl said.

Demjanjuk is expected to be held in the medical unit of a Munich prison. The government has said preparations have been made at the facility to ensure he will receive appropriate care.

The case dates to 1977 when the Justice Department moved to revoke Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship, alleging he hid his past as a Nazi death camp guard.

Demjanjuk had been tried in Israel after accusations surfaced that he was the notorious "Ivan the Terrible" at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. He was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a conviction overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

A U.S. judge revoked his citizenship in 2002 based on U.S. Justice Department evidence showing he concealed his service at Sobibor and other Nazi-run death and forced-labor camps.

An immigration judge ruled in 2005 he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine. Munich prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him in March
 

aristotle

Veteran Expediter
Who claimed moral equivalency? I'm just saying that he will get his trial, his age is a non-factor.
Doug... there is no comparison to be made between Demjanjuk and Osama bin Laden. One was a soldier. The other was/is a terrorist. There is no moral equivalency between the two of them. Apples and oranges.

The situation with bin Laden has no precedent. We do not yet know what fate awaits him.


What would you do with a captured bin Laden, Doug?
 

dabluzman1

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
Who claimed moral equivalency? I'm just saying that he will get his trial, his age is a non-factor.

____________________________________________________
Born in the Ukrainian SSR (several years before the USSR was established), Demjanjuk migrated to the United States in 1951. He was deported to Israel in 1986 and later sentenced to death there in 1988 for war crimes, based on his identification by Israeli Holocaust survivors as "Ivan the Terrible," a notorious SS guard at the Treblinka extermination camp during the period 1942–1943 who committed murder and acts of extraordinarily savage violence against camp prisoners. His conviction for crimes against humanity was later overturned by Israel's highest court in 1993 due to a finding of a reasonable doubt as to whether Demjanjuk really was "Ivan the Terrible," and he was returned to the United States.
____________________________________________________

If the Israelis could not prove he was a WW II Nazi guard,
why continue?
I mean, who wanted to see these war criminals put to justice more than they?
When Demjanjuk was sent to Israel to face charges, I thought it a mere formality, I really expected that he would be found guilty and executed by the Israelis.
Do you think the Israelis maybe didnt follow thru or were incompetent?
They had personnel who hunted down war criminals.
No-one was more thorough, more persist, or more hungry
for revenge /justice.
If Israel said it wasnt sure, why continue pursuing this ?
This does not serve history or education.
It is now an injustice.
 

DougTravels

Not a Member
Did you even read my response?

I said IF what they allege is true then hang him high! You disagree with that?

A soldier yeah, but if that soldier is responsible for thousands of civilian deaths he should pay the price, IF THEY CAN PROVE IT!

As Far as Osama the same thing, a trial and if convicted face the penalty. You know, The American Way.
 

aristotle

Veteran Expediter
Shame on the US Dept of Justice for allowing Demjanjuk to be deported. Our government must have been under hellish pressure from powerful interests to yield. It makes no sense.

Demjanjuk has been tried in court. And tried again. Each conviction overturned. Perhaps the Nazi hunters, being the gloryhounds they are, believe if they can get Demjanjuk before the "right" jury this time, the egg can be wiped from their faces.

The German people have slithered so far down the politically correct path, they just might offer up Mr. Demjanjuk as a sacrificial lamb to appease the aggrieved party. Better hurry, the old geezer might die on them before they can roll his wheelchair up to the gallows.

Regardless of what it is called, we do not have a Justice Dept.
 

aristotle

Veteran Expediter
Did you even read my response?

I said IF what they allege is true then hang him high! You disagree with that?

[A soldier yeah, but if that soldier is responsible for thousands of civilian deaths he should pay the price, IF THEY CAN PROVE IT!]

As Far as Osama the same thing, a trial and if convicted face the penalty. You know, The American Way.

Doug... we can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that American military personnel dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulting in the deliberate deaths of several hundred thousands of Japanese civilians.
According to your logic, we should hang the pilots, navigators, air traffic controllers, etc.... everyone up and down the chain of command having a hand in this.

Then there is the fire bombing of Dresden and dozens of other German cities where tens of thousands died. Civilian deaths.

In the era before political correctness, people understood what war meant. Total war. Today's liberal ascendancy has brought us to the point where war is an abstract exercise.

Liberalism and its handmaiden, political correctness, will be the downfall of this nation. Either we return to common sense or we live under the tyranny of lawyers.
 

DougTravels

Not a Member
Talk about a jump. They were not at war with the Jews. They were just killing them. There is a big difference between civilians being killed in battle/bombings and rounding up people and putting them in ovens.
 

OntarioVanMan

Retired Expediter
Owner/Operator
Talk about a jump. They were not at war with the Jews. They were just killing them. There is a big difference between civilians being killed in battle/bombings and rounding up people and putting them in ovens.

No when the Taliban capture you they cut off your head and video tape it so your family can watch....nice war
 

chefdennis

Veteran Expediter
As Letzrock said, he was tried, re tried and all charges dismissed....he is an old guy that some in the med community say won't survive a trial, this is nothing but a "show" of cooperation by the U.S. Justice Dept
 

Tennesseahawk

Veteran Expediter
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Doug. Fact is, if they couldn't claim he's who they say he is, they shouldn't have screwed with the man. If they could prove it, I'm sure they would've. But if he is guilty, he should hang. The guy is a scapegoat... guilty or not. No way he's getting a fair trial.

GO GERMANY! Show those Israelis how a kangaroo court is REALLY run!
 

DougTravels

Not a Member
I hope he gets a fair trial. I am not sure how possible that is. Unless I am mistaken he did lie to get to live here. If that is true that would make him an illegal, which many (myself included) see as a huge problem.

If it is true that he was one who loaded the ovens then he should pay the price. I agree it is easy to feel bad for some feeble old man, but this is no statute of limitations on a crime like that.

It does raise a real question that I don't believe is answerable unless you were there.

You are a guard at a concentration camp with orders to load the ovens, you will be killed if you don't do it. Even if you don't do it, someone else will. So they are already basically dead, you can only save yourself right.

What do you do?

I am marking this date on my calender May 12, 2009

Hawk and I agree on something.:)

I really see both sides of this, It is a question without a definite answer. My biggest point is that his age is a non-factor.
 

aristotle

Veteran Expediter
Why should there be a third, fourth, fifth trial for this man? The issue of double jeopardy comes to mind.

The passage of time, in this case at least 64 years, leaves details murky and facts almost impossible to ascertain. It is all about publicity for attention seeking antagonists. Obama caved to the pressure of a powerful lobby. It is a shameful act to hand this man over for a show trial in Germany.
 

cheri1122

Veteran Expediter
Driver
Like the 'Rocket', I lived near Demjanjuk's home when he was tried originally, and read a lot about it at the time. I never thought he was guilty either, for several reasons: the passage of time tends to corrode the already extremely unreliable veracity of 'eyewitnesses', which is all the proof there ever was.
Second, would anyone capable of the level of barbaric behavior needed to stand out in a time of what must have seemed like near universal depravity to the victims be able to put it behind him and become a hard working family man for so many years? That just doesn't seem possible.
Third, as was mentioned, if Israel [with every motive to decide otherwise] pronounced him not guilty, then the evidence to convict him just didn't exist.
It's not the first time a prosecutor has gone too far to convict an apparently innocent person, but it is one of the worst, without a doubt.
 

greg334

Veteran Expediter
You are a guard at a concentration camp with orders to load the ovens, you will be killed if you don't do it. Even if you don't do it, someone else will. So they are already basically dead, you can only save yourself right.

Dougie, there is a lot more to the story. Guards were not the ones loading the ovens, I will stop with that.

The problem is that we are spending so much money on this subject and then having a country, Israel, prosecuting these people. The country, Israel was not a country at the time, they only have this right through treaties and we help them with a lot of the cases through our justice department.

Germany didn't do much, most of the guards and others lived freely until most of them died. When you have SS generals and officers who were never brought to justice, I can't reason why we spent so on one man.

Now the other thing I want to say is that even though the years have faded a lot of memories, there are things that you never forget. Witnessing things, like killing of children or having your family shot, you remember every detail of the people who were there. I have talked to a bunch of survivors and they always detailed things for me.

Just to throw this into the mix, there are a lot of others we should be thinking about, a number of Poles and Russians who had their hand in this as well, the same with the French and Brits having a hand in running the POW camps after the war where thousands of prisoners were killed. And we have ourselves to blame for Dresden, there was no reason for this and when you read the details of the operation, you could conceivably think Hitler planned it on London.
 

DougTravels

Not a Member
Greg:

WTF are you 2 years old?
I have not been Dougie for many years.
My town is Hazel Park not Hazel Tucky.

I hope that name calling makes you feel superior, because it shows everyone else just how childish you are.

I caved yesterday and called you Gagg and Gayg, (I believe thats what they were) after being called Dougie by you again.

If thats it what you want (childish name calling) I guess I'll play along, but it really serves no purpose except to show your mentality or lack of it.

Maybe one day we will see each other somewhere and you can call me Dougie to my face.
 
Top