Braunsteiner-Ryan case

In 1964, it was discovered that Hermine Braunsteiner, a former SS guard in the concentration camps Ravensbrück and Majdanek, was living in the United States. She had met Russel Ryan while he was on holiday in Austria, and she entered the United States in 1959 shortly after their marriage. The case caused an outcry and, as a result, the Special Litigation Unit was set up at the immigration authority. This group was to identify other war criminals from the Nazi-era who lived in the United States. The unit was transferred from INS to the Justice Department in September 1979.^[19]

Initiative by Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman

New York Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman called for and actively promoted strengthening the special unit to prosecute war criminals residing in the United States.^[20] The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) was established in 1979 within the US Department of Justice. Its task consisted of processing the accumulated cases and the resumption of the search for war criminals in the United States. The OSI was equipped with broad powers that enabled it to take all necessary steps to accomplish its mission including investigation, litigation, negotiating with foreign governments, and calling for support from other U.S. authorities.

Disagreements over OSI operations

As the work began, OSI faced widespread disagreement on many important issues. Some felt the effort to expel World War II war criminals was important both to achieve justice and to set precedent for the future, while others felt that the time had passed for pursuit of these aims.^[29] Some Justice Department officials felt OSI should have a Jewish Director, while others did not want the office to be viewed as a Jewish organization and favored Ryan as director in part because he was not Jewish.^[30] Eastern European nationality groups opposed OSI's use of evidence from the USSR, which had an interest in discrediting Baltic State, Ukrainian, and other emigre groups and might well provide false information and forged documents to achieve their aims.^[31][32] These emigre groups also challenged the use of the lower standard of evidence involved in civil trials compared to criminal trials,^[31] even though citizenship revocation and deportation were civil issues and US law at the time did not provide for criminal penalties for crimes committed on foreign soil unless against US citizens.^[33] The emigres also feared that OSI might seek to deport anyone who had lied on their entry applications, not just the wartime persecutors that OSI sought to expel.^[31] In contrast, Jewish groups were pressing for more determined action by OSI than INS had demonstrated. It became clear that leading OSI was going to involve a lot of public relations work as well as research and prosecution.^[34]

Disagreements over who should be prosecuted

From the beginning, OSI had to deal with disagreements over who should be prosecuted. In contrast to the Fedorenko case, which the INS had lost and OSI had won on appeal, the Walus case had been lost on appeal by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago with the court ordering a retrial. Director Ryan counseled against pursuing the case.^[35] The documentary evidence was weak and the eyewitnesses, forty years after the fact, were unconvincing. It was even possible that this was a case of mistaken identity. According to Judith Feigin, OSI's historian, it took courage in 1981 for OSI to dismiss the Walus case. Frank Walus had come to the attention of INS in 1974 by a letter from Simon Wiesenthal,^[36] a highly respected Holocaust survivor and acclaimed Nazi hunter. Several Holocaust survivors had traveled to America from Israel and emotionally confronted Walus, whom they believed to be their former tormentor, in court. Furthermore, OSI had not yet won the confidence of the Jewish community, whose support could be important for the organization's success. OSI could expect a negative reaction for not pursuing Walus.^[37][38]

Andrija Artuković (1951–1986)

Andrija Artuković was a construction worker in California. During the war, he had been a senior official in occupied Croatia. His decrees called for internment and execution of "undesirables" such as Serbs Jews, Gypsies, Orthodox Christians, and Communists. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs and Jews were massacred as a result.^[44] He was extradited to Yugoslavia in 1986, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by firing squad. Due to his poor health, execution was deferred, and he died of natural causes in 1988 in a prison hospital. The litigation over this high ranking Nazi collaborator was the longest experienced by INS and OSI.^[45]

Valerian Trifa (1975–1982)

Valerian Trifa, as archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate in Grass Lake, Michigan, was a powerful and influential religious figure in the U.S. At one point, he even presented the opening invocation for the U.S. Senate. During the war, he had been a propagandist and member of Romania's fascist Iron Guard. His anti-Semitic writings provoked riots resulting in torture and murder of hundreds of Jews. As OSI was preparing to take him to trial, Trifa surrendered his citizenship and was ultimately deported to Portugal. Portugal later tried to deport him as well, but he died of a heart attack before this could be completed.^[46]

Wolodymir Osidach (1979–1981)

Wolodymir Osidach was a retired slaughterhouse worker in Philadelphia who, during the war, had been an officer in the Ukrainian police force at Rava Raska that helped the Germans round up 14,000 Jews for transportation to the Belzec extermination camp. In November 1979, the OSI filed a complaint that Osidach had lied about his wartime activities when he successfully applied for entry into the United States in 1949 as a Displaced Person. This was the first case handled by the newly created OSI from beginning to end and the first it took to trial. Without determining whether Osidach was responsible for specific atrocities, the judge agreed that Osidach had fraudulently entered the US and subsequently obtained US citizenship. Accordingly, in 1981, the judge stripped Osidach of his naturalized citizenship, opening the way for his deportation. Osidach died of a heart attack before deportation hearings commenced.^{[47][48][49][50]}

Otto von Bolschwing (1979–1982)

Otto von Bolschwing worked for a computer leasing company in California where he rose to the level of vice president. During the war, he had been the chief SS intelligence officer in Romania. He worked with Adolf Eichmann to devise programs that persecuted Germany's Jews. After the war, he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency before emigrating to America. Rather than contest the OSI complaint against him, Bolschwing agreed to surrender his citizenship. He died before deportation proceedings were initiated. He was the highest ranking German prosecuted by OSI.^[51]

Karl Linnas (1979–1987)

Karl Linnas worked as a land surveyor living in Greenlawn, New York. During the war, he had been head of an Estonian concentration camp during the Nazi occupation. Kneeling prisoners were shot on his orders. The Soviets convicted him in absentia for having taken an active part in 12,000 murders and wanted him extradited. After extensive legal proceedings, Linnas was ultimately sent to the U.S.S.R., where he died in a prison hospital.^[52]

Johann Breyer (1992–2014)

Johann Breyer was a tool and die maker for an engineering company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the war, he had been a member of the Death's Head Battalion of the Waffen-SS acting as a guard at Buchenwald and Auschwitz, at which he was accused as an accessory in the murder of 216,000 Jews. He came to the U.S. in 1952 and became a naturalized citizen in 1957. Denaturalization proceedings were complicated by his mother's claim that she had been born in the U.S. and that Breyer was only seventeen years old when he began service with the SS. After the "most arcane and convoluted litigation in OSI history," the courts ultimately blocked OSI's efforts to strip Breyer of his U.S. citizenship.^[53] No deportation proceedings were then possible. In 2013, however, Germany requested that Breyer be extradited. He was arrested but died at age 89 before an extradition hearing could begin.^[54]

Juozas Budreika (1994–1996)

Juozas Budreika was a retired cook in Gulfport, Florida. During the war he had been a member of the 2nd/12th Lithuanian Schutzmannschaft (Protective Detachment) Battalion, a mobile killing unit that murdered thousands of unarmed Jews and other civilians in Lithuania and Byelorussia. He agreed to forfeit his citizenship and relocate to Lithuania, where he died shortly after his arrival.^[55]

Algimantas Dailidė (1994–2003)

Algimantas Dailidė was a retired Cleveland, Ohio real estate agent living in Gulfport, Florida. During the war, he was a member of the Lithuanian Security Police (the Saugumas) that arrested Jews who attempted to escape from the Vilnius ghetto and turned them over to the Nazis. Such people were generally shot outside Vilnius at the Paneriai execution pits, where about 50,000 Jews were murdered. His U.S. citizenship was revoked in 1997, and he was ordered deported to Lithuania in 2002. In 2006, he was convicted by a Lithuanian court of persecuting civilians^[56] but, because of his age, he was not sentenced to prison. He died in Europe in 2015 and was buried in Ohio.

Demjanjuk controversy (1975–2009)

A highly controversial and widely publicized case involved Ivan (aka John) Demjanjuk, who was ultimately convicted in 2011 in Germany as an accessory in the murder of 28,000 Jews while a guard at Sobibor extermination camp in occupied Poland. This conviction was the culmination of determined prosecutorial efforts over thirty years in three countries. Legal scholar Lawrence Douglas, who wrote a detailed history of the Demjanjuk case, concluded in 2016 that, in spite of serious missteps along the way, the German verdict brought the case "to a worthy and just conclusion" that "never would have happened without the stubborn exertions of the OSI.^[57]

The controversy stemmed from OSI's initially mistaking Demjanjuk's identity and proceeding with denaturalization action against him in the belief that he was the notorious, sadistic guard known as "Ivan the Terrible" at Treblinka extermination camp. OSI had obtained conflicting evidence from documents and eyewitnesses as to Demjanjuk's description and location during the war that led one member of the prosecution team to recommend not pursuing the case. Others were convinced at the time that Demjunjuk was "Ivan" and the case went forward.^[58] At his U.S. denaturalization trial in 1981, Demjanjuk was judged to be the Treblinka guard "Ivan" and the U.S. citizenship he had obtained in 1958 was revoked. In separate, subsequent proceedings, it was further determined that he was deportable and extraditable. At the request of the government of Israel, he was extradited to face trial there for war crimes. In 1988, after a fourteen-month trial, it was again determined that Demjanjuk was "Ivan the Terrible." He was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death.^[59]

During the period that Demjunjuk's Israeli conviction was on appeal, the Soviet Union collapsed. New evidence became available in 1991 from behind the former Iron Curtain that strongly indicated that Demjunjuk had not been at Treblinka (and therefore was not "Ivan the Terrible") but had been at other notorious camps, including Trawniki, Sobibor, Flossenburg and Majdaek. Demjunjuk's defense team in the U.S. used this new evidence, along with allegations of improprieties by the OSI, to overturn both the denaturalization decision as well as the later extradition decision. In 1993, the Israeli Supreme court also acquitted Demjanjuk of charges related to the actions of "Ivan the Terrible," even though there was considerable evidence of his being involved with war crimes at other camps. Demjanjuk was freed and, although no longer a U.S. citizen, he was returned to the United States.^[60]

In obtaining this favorable result for their client, Demjanjuk's defense teams in the U.S. and Israel accused OSI of improperly withholding evidence that should have been disclosed because it was potentially useful to their client. They further accused OSI of intentionally presenting falsified evidence, and improperly influencing witnesses. OSI denied all these charges.^[61][62][63]

These accusations prompted seven separate investigations looking for evidence of prosecutorial or ethical misconduct. They were conducted by three separate investigative bodies between 1987 and 1993. First, the Appeals Court appointed a Special Master, Federal District Court Judge Thomas A. Wiseman, Jr., who conducted a six-month inquiry resulting in a 210-page report. Wiseman concluded that OSI prosecutors "did not intend to violate the Rules or their ethical obligations." They had cooperated fully in his investigation, testified truthfully, and were "principled, albeit fallible." Wiseman found no prosecutorial misconduct.^[64] Second, the District of Columbia Bar reviewed the conduct of both director Ryan and the attorney assigned to the case. It also found no wrongdoing.^[65] Third, the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) conducted a total of five internal inquiries into various aspects of the prosecution. One was at the request of OSI itself and another at the request of Demjanjuk's defense team. These investigations also concluded that there had been no improper conduct. Another OPR investigation was made at the request of Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Gilbert S. Merritt, Jr., who had presided during the Demjanjuk denaturalization hearing and was highly critical of the prosecution, including a charge that "Jewish special interest groups" had influenced Ryan and the OSI. OPR found no merit to these charges. In short, all investigations, internal and external, of OSI's conduct in the prosecution of Demjanjuk concluded that there had been no intentional wrongdoing.^[66]

Nonetheless, the Appeals Court concluded that the government had defined too narrowly its duty to disclose potentially useful documents to the defense. Accordingly, in 1998, the Appeals Court rescinded its extradition order. In subsequent actions, based on the determination of the Appeals Court, Demjanjuk's deportation order was nullified and his U.S. citizenship restored. Further, the Court ruled that, because the civil actions regarding denaturalization and deportation were based upon allegations of criminal activity on the part of a defendant, henceforth OSI would have to use the more exacting rules of disclosure required by criminal proceedings. Lawrence Douglas characterized the court's action as "surprising" and particularly remarkable since the court "admonished the OSI for failing to satisfy a standard that the court had only just imposed."^[67]

Undeterred, and using the documents that became available since 1991 that had helped Demjanjuk establish he was not Ivan The Terrible, OSI filed a new complaint in 1999 seeking denaturalization, now based upon Demjanjuk's correct identity and his service at Trawniki, Sobibor, Majdanek, and Flossenburg. For a second time, Demjanjuk was stripped of his citizenship. Through multiple appeals and other legal maneuvering, Demjanjuk's defense team successfully delayed his deportation, this time to Germany, until 2009 and delayed conclusion of his trial there until 2011. After 91 days of trial, he was convicted on 16 counts as an accessory to the murder of over 28,000 Jews at Sobibor extermination camp during 1943. Accordingly, he was sentenced to five years in prison.^[66][68][69]

Again Demjanjuk appealed, but he died before the appeal was heard. His attorneys unsuccessfully appealed to have his citizenship restored posthumously.^[70] His relatives successfully arranged for his burial in Ohio, near where he used to live.^[71]

The controversy surrounding Demjanjuk's mistaken identity received extensive publicity in the U.S. His ultimate conviction for war crimes decades later in Germany did not. As a result, according to historian Judith Feigin, "many members of the public still know of OSI [only] as the mistaken prosecutor of Ivan the Terrible"^[72] and not the successful prosecutor of a Nazi war criminal.