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JUNE 30, 1989 / 27 SIVAN 5749
National Campaign
Against Nazi Cases
RUSS BELLANT
Special to The Jewish News
A continuing national campaign
to curb the prosecution of alleged
Nazi war criminals brought denuncia-
tions of the U.S. Justice Department's
Office of Special Investigations at a
forum in Warren on Sunday.
The event was sponsored by the
Ukrainian American Justice Com-
mittee, Michigan Chapter.
Virtually all the speakers describ-
ed the OSI as part of a sinister con-
spiracy of the "Jewish Lobby," the
KGB, or both. Several requests for
financial support for convicted
Treblinka guard John Demjanjuk's
legal appeals in Israel were also
made.
The Ukrainian groups opposing
OSI actions have mounted a cam-
paign to "criminalize" war crimes so
that they can be tried in the United
States rather than Germany, Israel or
the USSR. OSI only conducts civil
proceedings. Criminalization, which
requires an act of Congress, would
halt all current OSI proceedings.
Former Congresswoman
Elizabeth Holtzman, who was active
in prosecuting alleged Nazis in the
United States, believes that
"criminalization" would create ex
post facto law that may be
unconstitutional.
Holtzman told The Jewish News
this week that "this country should
never set a precedent of providing safe
haven for Nazi war criminals. Depor-
tation should be our response when
they've entered this country illegal-
ly."
As a congresswoman from New
York in 1978, Holtzman sponsored the
legislation that created the OSI.
George Nestercuz, executive vice
president of the Ukrainian Congress
Committee of America (UCCA), told
200 persons in Warren, "We will need
to reign them (OSI) in politically.
What we're seeing is defamation of
Ukrainians as a group. We've heard
of the use of Soviet-supplied evidence
(Demjanjuk's Nazi identity card).
Continued on Page 18
Mississippi Onward:
Rebuilding Coalition
KIMBERLY LIFTON
Staff Writer
How the Allied Jewish Campaign
settles its annual debate
over local vs. overseas needs
Television news flashes depicting
guard dogs attacking blacks and
memories of the Ku Klux Klan-filled
Mississippi during the summer of
1964 bring chills to Allen Zemmol.
Zemmol, now a Comerica Bank
senior corporate counsel—vice presi-
dent, and another Michigan lawyer
were registering black voters at a
Mississippi street corner when word
got out that the bodies of three miss-
ing civil rights workers had been
discovered. Two were Jewish; one was
black.
"We were all shocked," Zemmol
said. "We knew things were bad, but
we didn't think it would resort to that.
"In Mississippi, a few weeks
seemed like a lifetime," said Zemmol,
one of about 65 volunteer lawyers
from across the United States who
traveled to Mississippi to offer legal
support to blacks struggling for civil
rights.
"It was tense; the atmosphere was
hostile," Zemmol recalled. "There was
a pervasive fear. Blacks weren't com-
fortable with strange white men ask-
ing questions. Everybody was afraid
of everybody else."
Aware that phone lines likely
were tapped, Zemmol and another
young Jewish Michigan volunteer
lawyer, Larry Warren, spoke by
telephone in Yiddish. "We didn't
think southern operators spoke Yid-
dish," Zemmol said.
No known Jewish groups headed
to Mississippi, but many Jews like
Zemmol and Warren took part in the
civil rights movement. For Zemmol,
aiding blacks was — and still is — a
moral obligation.
"You can't expect people to help
you during times of need when you
don't help others:' he said. "I would
do it again."
Today, 25 years after Mississippi
was used as a civil rights bat-
tleground, black and Jewish leaders
say racial and anti-Semitic feelings
still abound. Jewish leaders say
blacks and Jews share mutual agen-
das since both were victims of slavery
and the Holocaust and must join
forces to combat such prejudices.
Continued on Page 18