Sobibor - Holocaust Propaganda And Reality - Unity of Nobility ...

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 381
The fact that Demjanjuk, together with other exiles, became active in
an anti-communist Ukrainian movement in his new home state of Ohio
would lead to his doom. A certain Emil Hanusiak who worked for the
pro-Soviet newspaper News from Ukraine habitually published articles
in which the Ukrainian exiles were blackened as “Nazi collaborators.”
In 1975 Demjanjuk became a target for Hanusiak’s aims. He saw himself
accused of having been a guard at the Sobibór camp during the war.
Concerning the background of the campaign against the automobile
worker, the Israeli lawyer Yoram Sheftel, who would later prevent
Demjanjuk from ending up on the gallows in Jerusalem, had this to
say: 1119 “Since 1987, when it became widely known that I had joined
Demjanjuk’s defense team, I have been asked often what it was that
could possibly have motivated the Soviet Union to malign this man,
who in 1976 had been a blue-collar laborer at the Ford plant in
Cleveland, and, to all intents and purposes, a perfectly nondescript
sort of man. My answer has always been that the objective was not
the specific man, John Demjanjuk. The Soviet objective, as far as I
was concerned, was to cause a rift between the Jewish and the
Ukrainian communities in North America. Because, despite the
many difficult and painful memories of strained relations between
the Jews and the Ukrainians, these two communities were beginning
to cooperate in anti-Soviet activity. And it was causing considerable
concern to the Soviet leaders in the Kremlin and their agents in
North America, especially a certain Michael Hanusiak […]. The Soviets,
therefore, decided to nip the Jewish-Ukrainian ‘conspiracy’ in
the bud. The Soviet success with the Demjanjuk plot was complete.
From the very beginning, Demjanjuk had cried out that he had never
been a guard in any extermination camp, that all the Soviet accusations
were no more than a vicious lie. As a result, much of the
Ukrainian community in North America closed ranks around him.
Not surprisingly, the Jewish community stood firmly on the other
side – Demjanjuk’s plea of innocence were seen as just another anti-
Semitic Ukrainian lie. Inevitably, a deep rift between the two communities
developed, to the obvious glee of the Soviets.”
1119 Yoram Sheftel, Defending ‘Ivan the Terrible.’ The Conspiracy to convict John Demjanjuk,
Regnery Publishing, Washington 1996, pp. ix, x.