On the morning Michael Pap took the stand to defend John Demjanjuk, two hundred Ukrainians peacefully demonstrated in the square outside the court building in support of his testimony. They were waving the blue and yellow flag adopted in 1918 as the national symbol of the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic.
John Martin began his direct examination of Pap by noting that Moscow kept lists of Soviet citizens who had been forced laborers and POWs. Moscow considered
Martin needed to establish that refugees knew about the lists and feared the Soviet repatriation teams that visited DP camps. “Were you familiar with the list of collaborators that was passed around?” he asked Pap.
“Yes. Up until about 1947—and even into 1948,” Pap said, “Soviet authorities were permitted to provide [to the IRO] a list of names of those people whom they suspected to have been Nazi collaborators.”
“Did you ever see such a list?”
“Yes.”
“And if a person’s name was on this list… what, if anything, would happen to him?”
“He would be deported,” Pap said. “From 1948… the deportation was not enforced. But still the people were very much afraid.”
“Are there any figures available as to how many… Soviet [civilians] were repatriated forcibly between the end of the war and 1948?” Martin asked.
“Over two million.”
“Were you familiar with the policy whereby an applicant might give a place of birth as a small town somewhere in Poland?”
“It was basic knowledge.”
“Do you have an opinion why this was done?”
“Because they were afraid that if they would identify themselves as former citizens of the Soviet Union, they would be simply deported to the Soviet Union,” Pap said. “The Soviet Constitution reads: ‘desertion to the enemy… shall be punishable with all the severity of law as the most heinous of crimes.’”
“What would happen to a…
“Two and a half million were deported,” Pap explained. “About a million were executed immediately and the rest were sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor.”
Pap turned to Judge Battisti: “In 1957, Your Honor, an amnesty was offered by Khrushchev. Only twenty percent of those [deported] were still alive.”
“Twenty percent of what figure?” Battisti asked.
“Of the two and a half million.”
Pardon for political prisoners, including former POWs and their families, was part of Khrushchev’s de- Stalinization program. He issued the decree in September 1955, not in 1957.
“Based on your research and studies of the Soviet Union, did it ever come to your attention where the Soviet Union… participated in forged documents?” Martin asked.
“Yes. From the inception of the Soviet government, the basic preoccupation was to forge evidence,” Pap said.
“Do you have an opinion as to
“Objection, Your Honor.”
“Sustained.”
The question was speculative and Pap was not an expert on Soviet internal politics. Battisti’s ruling was a temporary setback for the defense.
Moscowitz conducted the cross-examination of Professor Pap. He began with an attempt to taint his testimony as totally biased. “I take it that you consider yourself an opponent of the Soviet government, is that correct?”
“Based on the research and documents I have examined,” Pap said.
“For example, you’re in favor of an independent Ukraine?”
“Categorically.”
“That’s a matter of personal belief, is that correct?”
“No!” Pap said. “It’s a matter of the right of nations to self-determination—a concept which was born in the United States.”
Next, Moscowitz began to question Pap’s credibility on the subject of Soviet-forged documents.
“Have
“I read an article.”
“You yourself have not examined any documents in this case—documents that you made claim had been falsified by the Soviet Union—is that correct?” Moscowitz pressed.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Have you
“Yes.”
“You yourself had seen falsified documents?”
“I saw them in printed books,” Pap conceded.
“In other words, you read accounts of
“Yes.”
“You are not a documents examiner, are you?”
“No, I am not.”
“Are you aware, sir, that there are captured German documents in the possession of the Soviet government?” Moscowitz asked.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it possible that if they had such documents—which implicated a former Soviet citizen in collaboration with the Germans—that they would make such documents available?”
“I think they would, yes.”
“How would you satisfy yourself that the document was authentic?”
“I would want to have the examination of those documents by specialists,” Pap said.
“And would you be satisfied as to its genuineness if the Soviet government made available the
“Experts again.”
Pap knew he was in trouble as a defense witness and he attempted to change the topic. “Your Honor,” he said, “I know for sure the Soviet Union has a division in the KGB which is producing forged documents on the order of the government.”
Pap was probably referring to Service A of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, which John McMahon, CIA deputy director for operations, had described during a hearing by the House Select Committee on Intelligence the previous year.
“Have you been over to
“No.”
Moscowitz returned to the issue of the validity of documents supplied by the Soviets in denaturalization cases. He called Pap’s attention to the case of Wladymir Osidach, who was then on trial in Philadelphia for collaborating with the Nazis as a policeman and lying about it on his visa application. As part of its case, the government accused him of rounding up and exterminating Jews in Rawa-Ruska, Ukraine. The federal district court in Philadelphia would eventually strip Osidach of his U.S. citizenship, but he would die before he could be deported to the Soviet Union, where most likely he would have been tried and executed.
“Mr. Osidach admitted that the Soviet documents implicating him as a Ukrainian policeman were
