Page 17-THE NEWS-March, 1986
JIXJB
Jewish Books in Review
is a service of the IWBJewish Book Council,
IS East 26ih St., New York, N.Y. 10010
Nazi Hunting in America
Quiet Neighbors: Prosecuting
Nazi War Criminals in America,
By Allan A. Ryan, Jr. Har-
court Brace Jovanovich, 1250
Sixth Avenue, San Diego, CA
92101. 1984. 386 pages.
$15.95.
The Outraged Conscience:
Seelters of Justice for Nazi War
Criminals in America. By
Rochelle G. Saidel. State
University of New York Press,
State University Plaza,
Albany, NY 12246.1984. 246
pages. $29.50 (cloth); $9.95
(paper).
Reviewed by Roselyn Bell
Rochelle G. Saidel opens her
book, The Outraged Con
science, with a quotation from
Amos, “Let justice well up as
waters, and righteousness as a
mighty stream.” Allan A.
Ryan, Jr., in his lengthier in
scription to Quiet Neighbors,
quotes Thomas More’s line in
“A Man for All Seasons”:
“Yes, I’d give the Devil
benefit of law, for my own
safety’s sake.” Their choices
of openings are indicative of
their differing approaches to
their conmion subject, the
search for Nazi war criminals
in America.
Saidel and Ryan, both pas
sionate seekers of justice, tell
the story from opposite per
spectives. Saidel traces the
travails of the pursuers: the
journalists, rabbis, govern
ment workers, survivors and
housewives for whom the tran
quil existence of former Nazi
persecutors in America was
unconscionable. Hers is a
twisting tale of frustration,
isolation, jealousy and limited
success.
Ryan, who, from 1980 to
1983, headed the Office of
Special Investigations, a unit
of the Justice Department
created to step up denaturali
zation and deportation trials
of ex-Nazis, gives the histori
cal record: what the various
accused did to contribute to
the “Final Solution” in
Europe, how they were able to
camouflage themselves by be
ing ‘‘quiet neighbors,” and
how they were discovered and
dealt with by the American
agencies of justice.
Justice was not always serv
ed, Ryan readily admits, as in
the case of Andrija Artukovic,
“the most prominent Nazi of
all in the U.S.,” who as
Minister of the Interior of the
Independent State of Croatia,
ordered the massacre of hun
dreds of thousands of Jews
and Serbs; he came to America
under a false name on a 60-day
visa in 1948, was ordered
deported in 1952, but through
a series of reversals was aUow-
ed to stay for over 30 years.
His case is now back in the
courts, though the defendent,
at age 83, may not survive the
final ver^ct. Of the 24 cases
brought to trial by the OSI
during its five years of ex-
istrace, the proaecutioa has
won 21.
Ryan, as director of OSI for
three of those five years,
brings an authoritative in
sider’s view to his book. He
describes how he and Walter
Rockier, only four weeks after
the invasion of Afghanistan,
went to Moscow to hammer
out an agreenient with the
Soviet Procurator General
that would permit the taking
of depositions from Soviet
citizens who had witnessed
war crimes. He quotes the trial
transcripts to show both the
I horror of the crimes and the
flatness of the accused’s
responses to them.
He quotes at length from his
own investigative report on
the Klaus Barbie case, in
which he concludes that “of
ficers of the United States
government were directly
responsible for protecting a
person wanted by the govern
ment of France on criminal
charges and in arranging his
ecape from the law,” but that
the Counter Intelligence of
ficers involved could not be
prosecuted for obstruction of
justice because the statute of
limitations had run out.
Saidel’s book, drawn from
interviews with the Nazi
hunters and their families,
tells more than we might want
to know about the private
lives of these individuals and
less than would have been
useful about the criminals
they pursued. Furthermore,
her greatest wrath seems
directed not at the war
criminals themselves, nor at
the Immigration and Naturali
zation Service which put
higher priority on finding
Communists and smugglers
than Nazis among new im
migrants, but on the Jewish
conmiunal organizations and
the Jewish press which, in her
view, did not pursue this issue
for 2V2 decades.
She suggests that Nazi-
hunting in the 50s and 60s was
perceived as a leftist or Com
munist preoccupation and so
the organized Jewish com
munity did not want to be
associated with it. She also im
plies, not persuasively, that
the Jewish Agency’s financial
support of the Jewish Tele
graphic Agency was the
reason for the news agency’s
silence on the subject of Nazis
in the 50s and 60s for fear that
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SWEATERS BY PATTY
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Instruction 1-5
The Jewish Calendar
Candlelighting
Mar. 1 - 6:01 p.m.
Mar. 8 - 6:07 p.m.
Mar. 15 - 6:13 p.m.
Mar. 22 - 6:19 p.m.
Mar. 29 - 6:24 p.m.
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Israel might lose vital repara
tion money.
Ryan, in contrast, dismisses
conspiracy theories and thinks
the U.S. got the kind of im
migrants it deserved when it
enacted laws, specifically the
Displaced Persons Act of
1948, which favored Nazi col
laborators over Nazi victims,
the Jews. “They (the Nazi war
criminals) came in, not because
unaccoimtable officials ran
amok, but because we enacted
laws that made entry so easy.”
The only remedy for that
bad law now is a good law, the
Holtzman amendment of 1978
which ordered deportation
from the U.S. for any alien
found to have “ordered, in
cited or otherwise participated
in the persecution of any per
son because of race, religion,
national origin or political
opinion” during the Nazi era.
Ryan’s pursuit of Nazis has
been rigorously within the law
because “it is our adherence to
law that separates us from
them.”
Why now? Why are the pro
secutions coming now and
why the books about the
search now? Because enough
time has passed to deal with it,
suggests Ryan. “If it is
true...that our silence im
mediately after the Holocaust
was not due entirely to apathy
but, at least in part, tothe in
ability to respond intelligent
ly to such a massive wound to
the human race, then the
record is not beycmd salvage.”
These books are both part of
that salvage operation.
Roselyn Bell is senior editor
of Hadassah Magazine.
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