Posted on 08/02/2005 8:25:26 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
An aging Chicago carpenter should be stripped of his U.S. citizenship because he was a member of a police unit that helped the Nazis round up Ukrainian Jews for forced labor and death camps during World War II, federal attorneys argue.
"He acquiesced in conduct contrary to civilization and decency," government attorney Gregory Gordon told U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan as a civil trial against Osyp Firishchak began Monday.
Firishchak, 86, came to the United States after World War II, settled in Chicago and obtained American citizenship. But the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations says he lied on his visa application and broke other rules.
The government says he joined the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police and helped in widespread roundups of Jews who were sent to forced labor camps and death camps after the Germans occupied Ukraine in 1941.
If Der-Yeghiayan rules against him, Firishchak would be stripped of his citizenship. The government then likely would seek to deport him.
Defense attorney James Maher III told the judge that Firishchak was never a member of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police and that there is no proof he did any of the things the government claims. Maher also said there is nothing to suggest Firishchak was dishonest on his visa application.
The government's first witness, Holocaust researcher Dieter Pohl, described what happened to the Jewish population in the city of Lviv at the hands of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police.
"There was constant violence against the Jews," Pohl said.
Firishchak's name of surfaced after the fall of the Soviet Union when the newly independent Ukraine opened its archives to Holocaust researchers.
Government attorneys acknowledged they have only a smattering of direct evidence that specific acts allegedly were committed by Firishchak. But they say they can prove he was part of the auxiliary police throughout the war and that the unit was instrumental in carrying out the Holocaust in Ukraine.
I wonder if he knows the Pope (ducks and runs)
That 80 year-old former German soldiers are living in the United states, or;
Maybe they'll start looking for Muslim terrorists when they rid us of the Nazi threat. Then maybe not.
Or that the worst parts of the Nazi regime ended up in the Democratic Party Platform?
Nope. After the Nazis, they'll go after North Koreans from the 50's, then Viet Cong, then..what, Granadians, Panamaians, Bosnians? Your tax dollars at work and play for the sake of political correctness.
"I hate Illinois Nazis!"
Correction: this desperado is 86. This is obviously a political matter. Ordinary prosecutors do not waste their time going after 86 year olds.
Oh please. Death to Nazi Scum, even if they are in their 80s.
Then again, when the government's concerned, consistency isn't important.
Anyone here know what kind of name that is? I couldn't even begin to speculate. We didn't have any Der-Yeghiayans in the neighborhood when I was growing up.
Sounds kinda Armenian...
They usually end in 'ian' rather than 'yan', but it is possible. I don't think I've ever seen one hang a 'der' out front, either.
His bio indicates Syrian.
OOPS. Born in Syria. Armenian ancestry.
Drop-kick his sorry ass out of the country. I don't care if he's 86 or 986.
Too bad Osyp Firishchak wasn't a murdering Mexican illegal, or a murdering Mariel-boatlift refugee - the government would turn a blind eye...
Thanks. The 'y' was throwing me.
>>>>>>>Drop-kick his sorry ass out of the country. I don't care if he's 86 or 986.
Are you joking? You really think the US Government--which allows hundreds of thousands of people to cross our border and stay each year, and is trying to figure out ways to invite more--is after this guy because of an immigration violation?
He is being targeted because the government suspects that he may have been a policeman in the Ukraine in WW II. If he had lied about anything else, he would be left alone, the way prosecutors routinely ignore 86 year olds whose crimes, if any, occurred over 50 years ago.
Such prosecutions represent revenge for the Holocaust. Unfortunately, almost all of those worthy of getting revenge on--the Hitlers, Himmlers, and Eichmans, less known men guilty of genuine war crimes--are long since dead. So 86 year olds (who are probably guilty of nothing more than getting caught up in a war that devastated their country, killing millions of Ukrainians) pay the price, as do their children and grandchildren who were born in this country. This isn't justice; it's a mockery of justice.
Of course not. I believe in the rule of law.
If true then slam him.
I wonder how many former NKVD killers we have wandering around the United States.
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