Richard Rashke - Useful Enemies

Holtzman sent blistering letters to INS commissioner Leonard Chapman and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in April 1975 demanding that they open channels to Bonn, Tel Aviv, and Moscow. Under pressure from her and the chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, Representative Joshua Eilberg of Pennsylvania, Kissinger caved in. He agreed to review the names on the Karbach list, one by one, then ask Bonn to provide what information it had on each.

Kissinger’s promise was an empty one because all but one of the people named on the Karbach list were Eastern Europeans. It was highly unlikely that West Germany would have any useful information on them as it had on Braunsteiner, a Western European. And, in fact, it turned out that Bonn couldn’t help.

A month later, in May 1975, Holtzman was part of a congressional delegation to the National Conference on Soviet Jewry (NCSJ), held in Moscow. The conference focused on the Soviet campaign of intimidation to prevent Jews from joining their families living outside the Iron Curtain. NCSJ did not pull any political punches. It accused the Soviet Union of firing Jews who applied for emigration permits, evicting them from their subsidized apartments, kicking them out of school, arresting them on trumped-up charges, and drafting them into the army as punishment. Soviet officials did not take kindly to NCSJ’s public lashing. The atmosphere in the conference room was palpably hostile.

While attending the conference, Holtzman asked for a private meeting with Mikhail Malyarov, deputy procurator of the Soviet Union and one of the country’s ranking legal officers, to discuss an issue not on the NCSJ agenda—Soviet help in finding and deporting Nazi collaborators. Given that Holtzman did not have the blessing of the State Department to make such a request in the name of the United States, the unofficial meeting was a gamble. Would she make the State Department so angry that it would punish her subcommittee with an even colder shoulder? Would she kill the possibility of cooperation by making a hostile Soviet leader even more hostile?

When Holtzman brought up the Nazi issue with Deputy Malyarov, the atmosphere in the conference room immediately changed “from night to day.” Not only was Malyarov willing to cooperate with the United States, he was in fact eager. “We’ll help in any way we can,” he said. Then he went on to promise Holtzman the bright side of the moon: documents from its extensive archives, names and addresses of eyewitnesses, a welcome mat for American officials who wanted to interview them, and visas for witnesses to testify in the United States if requested. It was almost as if Malyarov were saying: Where have you been for the last thirty years? We’ve been waiting.

Malyarov placed one condition on his surprising offer. He wanted to see Henry Kissinger on his knees. The request for help, he stipulated, had to come through official channels. That was bureaucratese for not through a congresswoman, or an unenthusiastic INS, or a compromised Justice Department, but through Henry Kissinger and the U.S. Department of State.

There was the rub.

Kissinger had consistently refused to ask for Soviet assistance. To begin with, he was constitutionally suspicious of any Soviet promise. If the communists offered to help, there must be something in it for them. And what was in it for them was clear. If the Soviet Union helped, it would want extradition rights in return. A public Soviet trial of a Nazi collaborator would send a message to the rest of the world: We communists care about crimes against humanity while the United States does not. It would also send a political message: Collaborating with the enemy was high treason, and if a Soviet citizen ever committed treason, Moscow would chase him down and punish him even if it took thirty years.

Finally, cooperating with the Soviet Union would help Moscow disguise a not-so-subtle hypocrisy. Moscow was offering to help the United States find and expel Eastern Europeans who killed Jews as members of Einsatzgruppen. Truth be told, the Soviets had been happy to get rid of those Jews. And now, while its right hand was ready to try Nazi collaborators for murdering Jews in the past, its left hand was depriving Jews of their human rights and punishing them in the present.

Cold War politics aside, Holtzman knew what she had to do.

Washington bureaucrats did not respond to right and wrong, or the golden rule, or to justice and fair play. The higher moral ground was for angels. The only arguments they understood were political pressure and public embarrassment. So Holtzman tossed Kissinger and the State Department into the most powerful pressure cooker in America—the New York Times. Again, it was a ploy a junior congresswoman was not supposed to use. Juniors were expected to go through proper channels before launching public assaults on high government officials with the power to retaliate.

In an article published soon after she returned from Moscow, Holtzman accused the State Department of “making every effort to avoid contacting countries, including the Soviet Union,” for information about alleged Nazi collaborators. “Plainly dilatory,” she cried, “incomprehensible… at a loss to explain… an affront to Congress and the American people.”

The media whipping worked. Kissinger authorized a tentative overture to Moscow, requesting information about fourteen names on the Karbach list. And with the approval of the State Department, the INS sent four attorneys to Israel to interview witnesses of alleged Nazi collaborators on the Karbach list. They returned home with thirty-two signed affidavits and thirty-two promises to come to the United States to testify, if asked.

The breaking of the Cold War logjam was the fifth domino to tumble.

In an attempt to make sure that Holtzman would remain happy and quiet, the INS tossed her a bone—a new office totally dedicated to investigating alleged Nazis and Nazi collaborators. The new office was…. Sam Zutty. The INS gave him virtually no staff and forbade him to approach any foreign country for documents without the unanimous approval of a committee of fourteen INS bureaucrats. The last thing the INS wanted was another loose cannon like Anthony DeVito or Vincent Schiano.

The INS also released the Karbach list to the public, and it was no mere bone. Encouraged by the INS’s newfound “interest” in enforcing U.S. immigration law, individual whistle-blowers and organizations volunteered more names. The INS list quickly grew to more than two hundred. The last domino had finally tumbled.

One of the names on the new INS list was Iwan Demjanjuk.

Sam Zutty got a letter from New York senator Jacob Javits late in 1975, soon after he became the titular INS Nazi hunter without a full staff and a puny budget of ninety thousand dollars. Accompanying the Javits letter was a list of seventy alleged Ukrainian war criminals in the United States, a dozen of whom lived in Cleveland. The list had been compiled by Michael Hanusiak, a native-born American of Ukrainian descent and the editor of the Ukrainian Daily News.

Like Karbach, Hanusiak didn’t trust the INS. Wouldn’t a powerful New York Jewish senator like Jacob Javits command more attention than the editor of an obscure four-page ethnic newspaper?

The Hanusiak list was suspect from the start. It was no secret in the Ukrainian American community that the Ukrainian Daily News was a pro-Soviet rag, if not an actual mouthpiece of the Soviet government. It was also no secret that Hanusiak himself was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

The FBI had been closely watching Michael Hanusiak since the mid-1950s and compiled a 534-page file on him and his communist activities based on interviews with reliable confidential sources. I acquired a copy of that file under an FOIA request. Although half of the pages were still classified, the reports in the file paint a profile of Hanusiak and his relationship to the Soviet government.