John Demjanjuk's last appeal to avoid deportation was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on May 19. The 88-year-old accused Nazi concentration camp guard was stripped of his citizenship and ordered sent to Ukraine, his birthplace; Poland, the locus of the crimes; or Germany, the heir to the Nazi regime under which he served.
Yet, as it now stands, he is still in the United States. Why? He can't be exiled unless another country agrees to accept him. For the time being, he remains free.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, June 18, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 17 Editorial pages Desk 1 inches; 27 words Type of Material: Correction
Nazis: An Op-Ed article Friday about former Nazis referred to "Poland's Trawniki labor camp." The camp was run by Nazis in occupied Poland during World War II.
In this, Demjanjuk is not alone. There are five other former Nazi criminals against whom the U.S. Justice Department successfully completed deportation proceedings but whom no country has been willing to accept. Romanian-born Johann Leprich, a guard at Mauthausen camp in Austria, is one; his deportation was finalized in 2006. Another is Jakiw Palij, born in a region of Poland that is now in Ukraine. He was a guard at Poland's Trawniki labor camp (where in a single day in 1943, 6,000 prisoners were murdered), and his deportation was finalized in January 2006. Mykola Wasylyk, another Trawniki guard also found to be at the Budzyn camp, had his final appeal denied in 2004.
Theodor Szehinskyj, also born in a part of Ukraine that used to be Poland, was in the SS unit called the Death's Head Brigade and was a guard at the Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen and the Warsaw concentration camps. His deportation litigation was completed in March 2006.
Finally, there is Anton Tittjung. Tittjung was born in what was then Yugoslavia and is now Croatia. He was a Waffen SS member and a guard at Mauthausen.
Should any of these criminals worry that deportation is imminent, they might take comfort from the fact that the Supreme Court declined to hear Tittjung's final appeal way back in 2000. He still remains free in the United States. In addition, in recent years, four of their denaturalized Nazi peers died before they were ever deported.
In all of these cases, the countries of their birth, such as Ukraine, Romania, Poland or Croatia, and the countries where their crimes were committed, such as Austria or Poland as well as Germany, were contacted by the Justice Department, and none expressed interest in receiving these now "stateless" persons.
There is no law, domestic or international, that requires foreign countries to accept or extradite these former Nazis -- or to give a reason why they don't. However, their reasons are easy to divine and include not wanting to burden the state with these aged citizens, no desire for an expensive investigation and trial, and fear that nationalist or neo-Nazi elements might be aroused by reopening Nazi-era wounds.
