UP FRONT
Nazi Probes In Detroit
Are 'Just A Coincidence'
DAVID HOLZEL
Staff Writer
• I n the last nine months, three
Detroit-area residents have
been charged with Nazi war
crimes. That does not necessarily
mean Detroit is a magnet for Nazi
emigres, according to Michael Wolf,
a spokesman for the U.S. Justice
Department's Office of Special In-
vestigations. It is "just coincidence"
that the three were charged one
right after the other, Wolf told The
Jewish News. The OSI is not
searching Detroit for Nazis, he
said.
On March 17, the Justice De-
partment began denaturalization
proceedings against Peter Quintus,
a .71-year-old Shelby Township
man. Quintus is accused of being a
member of the Death's Head Bat-
talion and a guard at Maijdanek
death camp near Lublin, Poland.
According to a civil suit filed
by OSI in U.S. District Court in
Detroit, Quintus was born in
Yugoslavia and was recruited to
serve in the Nazi Waffen-SS in
1942. The suit says he was arrested
by the U.S. Army on Dec. 26, 1945.
Quintus was admitted to the
U.S. in 1956 and, according to the
suit, concealed his membership in
the Death's Head Battalion when
he applied for citizenship in 1964.
He was granted citizenship the fol-
lowing year.
The OSI suit asks that Quintus
be stripped of his citizenship, which
could lead to deportation.
Another alleged Death's Head
Battalion member, Johann Leprich,
61, of Clinton Township, was ac-
.
cused in June 1986 of having been
a guard at Mauthausen concentra-
tion camp. The Justice Department
has asked that Leprich be stripped
of his U.S. citizenship. Leprich de-
nies the charges.
Despite Leprich's and Quin-
tus's alleged membership in
Death's Head, OSI's Michael Wolf
sees no connection between the two
individuals. "They were in two
different camps, Leprich in Austria
and Quintus in Poland," he said.
Since September 1986, OSI has
been trying to question Alfonsas
Patalauskas, 76, of Detroit, about a
Soviet charge that he led a group of
Lithuanian Nazi sympathizers,
known as "Baltaraisciai," who mas-
sacred thousands of Jews in 1941.
Patalauskas has refused to answer
OSI's inquiries.
The Office of Special Investiga-
tions is investigating 600 suspected
Nazi war criminals. At least 13
have been deported or have left the
U.S. due to OSI's efforts.
One of these was Archbishop
Valerian Trifa, formerly of Grass
Lake and former head of the
Romanian Orthodox Church in the
U.S., who was deported to Portugal
after he stopped contesting a U.S.
denaturalization suit. He died there
Jan. 28. Trifa was charged with
being an Iron Guard leader who
fomented a riot in 1941 in
Bucharest that led to the deaths of
hundreds of Jews.
Wolf says OSI is not tapping
into a "Detroit vein" of former
Nazis. The investigations do not
begin in the U.S. "We focus on
places in Europe and follow to
wherever the defendant lives," he
said. _
Bill Graham
Dorothy Mahlin
Two Soviet Jewry Activists
Await Supreme Court Decision
The case against two Detroit
activists who were arrested in 1985
for demonstrating within 500 feet
of the, Soviet Embassy in Washing-
ton, D.C. will have their day in
court this year — by proxy.
The case against Dorothy
Mahlin • of Southfield, Bill Graham
of West Bloomfield, and . seven
other Soviet Jewry activists —
known as the "Embassy Nine" —
has been postponed while the U.S.
Supreme Court hears a similar
case.
The group is arguing that the
United States and the District of
Columbia are using selective pros-
ecution for those who violate the
D.C. statute in front of the Soviet
Embassy, but releasing similar vio-
lators who are protesting apartheid
at the South African , Embassy. The
Soviets have pressed charges while
the South Africans have not.
The nine were arrested on Oct.
22, 1985. They include residents of
Massachusetts, Illinois, California
and Iowa, all of whom were par-
ticipants in a national meeting of
the Union of Councils for Soviet
Jewry that was taking place in
Washington. A number of activists
were arrested that fall outside the
Soviet and South African embas-
sies. Twenty-one rabbis were con-
victed of violating the law and sen-
tenced to $50 fines. Five of the
rabbis chose to serve nine days in
jail rather than pay the fine.
Detroit Mayor Coleman Young
was among more than 3,000 anti-
apartheid activists arrested and
then released for demonstrating at
the South African Embassy in fall
1985 and spring 1986.
The Embassy Nine case was
scheduled to be heard last month,
Continaued on Page 12
ROUND UP
Ex-Soviet Says
Wallenberg Alive
Toronto — Raoul Wallen-
berg is alive, according to a
former Soviet intelligence
officer who emigrated to Is-
rael.
Apim
to
According
Moshinski, Wallenberg, the
Swedish diplomat who saved
thousands of Hungarian Jews
from the Nazis, lives in
Krasnoyarsk, east of
Novosibirsk, in Siberia under
another name.
The Soviets have always
claimed that Wallenberg died
in a Soviet prison in 1945.
Moshinski said in a recent
interview with a West Ger-
man press service that he
was the one who arrested
Wallenberg and deported him
to the Soviet Union.
Moshinski said his most re-
cent information about Wal-
lenberg came last December.
UJA Receives
Boesky Appeal
New York -- Would you
answer the appeal of Ivan
Boesky on Super Sunday?
That is the question the
United Jewish Appeal's steer-
ing committee in New York
,may be mulling over.
According to New York
magazine, the former De-
troiter and Wall Street arbit-
rager has asked the UJA-
Federation to allow him to do
community service work at a
UJA-affiliated charity in-
stead of going to prison.
Boesky pleaded guilty to in-
sider trading after his in-
dictment on that charge last
November.
"He has given (the UJA) a
lot of money," said a Jewish
community source, "so they
can't turn their backs on him.
But they don't want their
association with him to hurt
their fund-raising campaign."
Rabbis Backing
Grape Boycott
The Detroit Rabbinical
Commission has passed a
resolution endorsing the
boycott of non-union Califor-
nia table grapes.
The commission, which is
affiliated with the Jewish
Community Council and con-
sists of approximately 18
local rabbis, backed the
United Farm Workers-
inspired resolution last week.
The UFW is claiming table
grape growers are using pes-
ticides which are poisoning
farm workers and threaten-
ing the safety of consumers.
Also, the growers are refus-
ing to help underwrite a
study to establish the safety,
or danger, of the chemicals.
Rabbi Paul Yedwab of
Temple Israel, who helped
draft the commission's resolu-
tion, said the rabbis felt the
union had a just case and
that the possible poisoning of
farm workers and consumers
violates the injunction of
Tza'ar Ba'al Chaim, not to
cause pain to human beings.
UFW representatives had
approached the Rabbinical
Commission in February
seeking support for the
boycott and presented a
Chabad Students
Tour Michigan
Ten senior rabbinical stu-
dents from the Central
Lubavitch Rabbinical College
of New York will tour Michi-
gan beginning Sunday.
The ten, traveling in pairs,
will speak on Judaism's 'Tie r,
vance today in 35 towns in
the Upper and Lower Penin-
sulas. They will screen a
video about the Seven
"Noachide" Laws which pro-
hibit both Jews and non-Jews
from murder, stealing and
idolatry, and stress the belief
in one God.
5