even if one detects a certain tri-
umphant paranoia in his assault
on the presiding judge, Dov Levin
and the hapless prosecutor,
Michael Shaked.
In a new preface to the Ameri-
can edition, Mr. Sheftel cites a
Om.- Federal Appeals Court ruling of
November 1993, that the United
States covered up information at
the extradition stage that the bru-
tal Treblinka gas chamber opera-
tor was Ivan Marchenko and that
OSI attorneys "acted with reckless
disregard for the truth ..."
The appeals court vacated the
extradition decision, and Mr.
Demjanjuk is now back in Cleve-
land, Ohio.
Also at fault were Israelis, he
claimed. "The prosecutor has a
strong personal motive to suc-
ceed, even though he represents
the entire nation and the public
interest demands that, if he finds
new evidence, he has to say so.
There is public pressure to con-
vict almost at any cost ... Prose-
cution can easily turn into
persecution."
The Hebrew edition of Mr.
Sheftel's book appeared three
times on the Israeli bestseller list.
Since the Jerusalem appeals
court verdict, "Satan's lawyer," as
one paper called him, is no longer
a pariah, though the case won
him few friends. The hate calls
have ceased. The eye damaged by
an acid-throwing survivor has
healed.
"I'm often approached now,"
Mr. Sheftel reports, "by people
who are extremely desperate and
say rm the only one who can help
them. If I see that there is some
leeway, I may take the case. But
if it's open and shut that they are
guilty, I won't take it."
The lesson, the 47-year-old Mr.
Sheftel insists over black coffee in
his backstreet office off Tel-Aviv's
Allenby Street, is that you
shouldn't prosecute suspected
Nazis solely on the evidence of sur-
vivors' memories for crimes com-
mitted half a century ago. But he
vehemently disagrees with those
who argue that, after Mr. Dem-
janjuk, no more war-crimes sus-
pects should be tried at all.
Mr. Sheftel is a maverick right-
wing Zionist, whose hero, Men-
achem Begin, inspired riots
against Israel's reconciliation
with Germany in the 1950s. He
has no wish to let real war crim-
inals off the hook.
"There are still many, many
cases," he said, "where you can
find reliable documentary evi-
dence and reliable eye-witnesses
which corroborate each other.
Those cases should still be pros-
ecuted, but you must have evi-
dence which is not eye-witness
alone."
The "Ivan" trial was different
because Mr. Demjanjuk denied
from the start that he was ever
in Treblinka, though the appeals
EVIDENCE page 48
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