<\/p>\n
1. WHAT YOU CALL HIM<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n When I wrote to John Demjanjuk’s daughter, she sent me a packet stating her father, the Ukrainian SS man, had been framed by an editor at a small pro-Soviet, anti-Ukrainian, New York newspaper in 1975.<\/p>\n I was interested in seeing Demjanjuk.\u00a0 I had thought and dreamed about Nazis, but had never been in the same room with one.\u00a0 (I usually dreamed about being in the same room.)<\/p>\n At the 1981 Demjanjuk trial, lawyers argued over forensics, among other things, at the federal courthouse in Cleveland. I looked on as the prosecution presented a handwriting expert who had studied over 4,000 signatures.\u00a0 He said Demjanjuk’s signature on the prison guard ID card was the real thing, not a Soviet forgery.<\/p>\n The judge agreed on that and a few other things — after months of testimony — and revoked Demjanjuk’s citizenship.<\/p>\n Demjanjuk then spent<\/span> some time in various American prisons for technical violations, such as missing his first deportation hearing.<\/p>\n In 1986 Demjanjuk was sent to Israel for a second trial.<\/p>\n A cop at the Sixth District<\/strong><\/span> police station watched a small TV hidden under his desk that day.\u00a0 The TV was always on. \u00a0(I was covering the police news.)\u00a0 The cop said, “Hey, there’s that guy — What You Call Him — getting off the plane in Israel.”<\/p>\n “I’m surprised he didn’t take a pill,” I said.<\/p>\n “For what?\u00a0 He didn’t do it.”<\/p>\n “There are five witnesses,”<\/span> <\/strong><\/span>I said.<\/p>\n “So what. It’s the past.\u00a0 Let it die.\u00a0 But the fucking Jews keep bringing it up.\u00a0 He didn’t do it.\u00a0 He was told to, or else.”<\/p>\n A lieutenant interrupted,<\/strong><\/span> “What would you do if somebody put a gun to your head and said, ‘Do it or else’?”<\/p>\n “He didn’t have to do it,” I shrugged.\u00a0 I was down for the count with F-ing Jews.<\/em><\/p>\n Israel convicted Demjanjuk, and he was in an Israeli prison for years. Then Israel’s high court overturned its verdict on various technicalities and sent him back to America.<\/p>\n When Demjanjuk returned to the States, he went on trial again in Cleveland and was ordered deported.\u00a0 Nobody wanted him until last year, when Germany said yes.<\/p>\n Demjanjuk turns 90<\/strong><\/span> this Saturday in a German prison hospital.<\/p>\n Dem john’s luck.<\/p>\n Dem john yuck.<\/p>\n Damn john’s junket . . . Kiev Oblast, Flossenberg, Trawniki, Treblinka, Sobibor, Seven Hills\/Cleveland, Jerusalem, Munich.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n 2. VOLKSDEUTSCHE<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The building across from St. Edward High has two hair salons — one specializing in fades and buzzes, and the other for elderly women, all about perms and tints.<\/p>\n The tint shop is Martha’s.\u00a0 In 1977 she bought the business from Hildegard, a fellow German. Martha is Volksdeutsche<\/em>, an ethnic German from Poland.<\/p>\n Sometimes Martha sits<\/span> in her shop all day and doesn’t get a single customer.\u00a0 Her clientele is dwindling.\u00a0 Whenever I come in, she hugs me and cries. This happens every single time.<\/p>\n She always talks about <\/strong><\/span>Jews. \u00a0Poles, too, occasionally.\u00a0 She is not, as a rule, fond of Poles. “Every group has its devils, but the Poles had more than most,” she says.\u00a0 She mentions several East Side Jews who hired her when she came over in the 1950s.\u00a0 “Wonderful, wonderful people.”<\/p>\n I don’t know these <\/strong><\/span>East Side Jews.\u00a0 Some West Side gentiles think all East Side Jews know each other.<\/p>\n I wonder how much of Martha’s war saga is true.<\/p>\n Martha is often late with her rent. That’s a pain but not a major one.\u00a0 She’s good for it.<\/p>\n I hope her war stories are all true, but I don’t really want to know if they aren’t.<\/p>\n Martha says her mother rescued a Jewish girl in Kutno, Poland, during the war.\u00a0 Martha’s mother — along with her Uncle Wilhelm and Cousin Hedwig — saw the little girl at a train station, exchanged furtive glances with the girl’s mom, took the girl home, and raised her.\u00a0 The girl wound up marrying an Englishman after the war, Martha says.<\/p>\n Martha had Jewish ancestors who converted to Lutheranism in the 1800s, she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. WHAT YOU CALL HIM When I wrote to John Demjanjuk’s daughter, she sent me a packet stating her father, the Ukrainian SS man, had been framed by an editor at a small pro-Soviet, anti-Ukrainian, New York newspaper in 1975. I was interested in seeing Demjanjuk.\u00a0 I had thought and dreamed about Nazis, but had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1372,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions\/1372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}