Sunday, March 10, 2013

USEFUL ENEMIES : JOHN DEMJANJUK AND AMERICA'S OPEN-DOOR POLICY FOR NAZI WAR CRIMINALS
by Richard Rashke

Since John "Iwan" Demjanjuk was involved with war crimes trials for thirty-four years ending in 2011, there have been no more major Nazis called to testify for their atrocities committed during World War II. Most of them are probably dead anyway or too ill and senile.
Demjanjuk was the government's scapegoat. He was really a minor cog in the wheel and his ordeal became long, exhausting, and frustrating: two denaturalization trials, two deportation hearings, two extradition hearings, and two criminal trials. The question was, though, was he a collaborator or just trying to survive? He was subpoenaed by the U.S. Justice Department in 1977 that he had lied on his visa application in 1951 and had illegally entered America the following year.
At the same time that Demjanjuk was being tried in many courtrooms, the good old U.S. of A. was employing and protecting Nazis and Nazi collaborators. Why? Because it was during the Cold War and the U.S. military wanted to recruit "useful" Nazi war criminals to work for the United States as spies, to inform their new bosses who was a Communist and to try and impede it. INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) created loopholes in their policy of who could enter and who could not. (This would be the same policy that prevented thousands of Jewish refugees to come to America.)
Besides the Departments of War and State who trained the Nazis, the White House, the FBI, and the CIA were all involved and worked their butts off to hide, protect and shelter these criminals from those who were investigating them.
Talk about hypocrisy and deceit.
The war criminals that came from the Eastern Bloc countries were despicable. Richard Rashke writes in harrowing detail the horrors that these people committed on the Jews. It's extremely disturbing that these monsters were welcomed in America and they lived as free men when they should have been prosecuted and done away with.
For a 500-plus page tome, the book is extremely readable. Quite an impressive amount of startling research (50 pages of Sources and Notes). In case you can't remember all of the details (and there's plenty), a Timeline is offered.
Useful Enemies is an eye-opener. Anybody who is interested in the Holocaust (there's been plenty written about this subject but not to this extent) should not hesitate.
This book is a standout.
Very highly recommended.