77CIE JEWISH: NEWS THIS ISSUE 60¢ SERVING DETROIT'S JEWISH COMMUNITY 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