    KRISTALLNACHT RALLY (cont...) (BACK
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In a complaint filed on December 26, 2002, the
Criminal Division’s Office of Special Investigations
(OSI) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for
the Eastern District of New York alleged that beginning
in February 1943, Jaroslaw Bilaniuk, now 81, trained
for Nazi service at the infamous Trawniki Training
Camp, an SS-run training and base camp facility
in Nazi-occupied Poland. The government’s
suit seeks a judgment revoking his U.S. citizenship.
The Trawniki camp trained recruits to assist the
Nazis in implementing their plan to murder Jews
in Poland. According to the complaint, during his
training at Trawniki, Bilianuk was an armed guard
at a slave-labor camp for Jews adjacent to the
training facility. On November 3, 1943, the Trawniki
guards massacred 6,000 Jews, men, Women and children,
at the slave-labor camp. By March 1944, Bilaniuk
was serving in a unit that committed atrocities
against Polish civilians and others. In late 1944,
Bilaniuk was promoted by the SS to the SS Streibel
Battalion, a unit whose function was to round up
and guard thousands of Polish civilians in south-central
Poland.
 Michael Chertoff, the Assistant Attorney General
in charge
of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division,
said, “Bilaniuk and his fellow Trawniki-men
participated in the Nazis’ infamous genocidal
scheme. Such persons have no right to U.S. residence
or citizenship, and the Justice Department is committed
to ensuring that they find no safe haven here.
United
States Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf stated, “Jaroslaw
Bilaniuk concealed his Nazi past in order to gain
entry to this country, which enabled him later
to gain U.S. citizenship. We are determined to
see to it that he is brought to the bar of justice
at last to answer for his actions.”
“The fact that Bilaniuk has lived as a free
man as the United States for over 50 years is an
outrage,” said rally organizer Rabbi
Zev Meir Friedman, Dean of Rambam Mesivta. “We
have a moral responsibility to remember the events
of the recent past and speak out vociferously against
the perpetrators. Imagine if we found one of Osama
bin Laden’s henchman living freely in Queens
50 years from now, would we forgive and forget?
Should we?”
 For over a decade, Rambam Mesivta High School
has taken an outspoken, leadership role in student
and community activism, organizing rallies in support
of Israel and Israel’s right to defend itself,
and protesting French anti-Semitism, Saudi Arabian
support of terror, and several Nazi war criminals
living in the U.S. Rambam Mesivta rallies helped
effectuate recent tougher policies by the Australian
and Latvian governments regarding their tolerance
of Nazi war criminals living within their borders.
For its activities, Rambam Mesivta has received
many letters of recognition and support from members
of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
Kristallnacht is usually translated from German
as the “Night of Broken Glass.” It
refers to the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of November
9 and 10, 1938, which is considered by many to
be the beginning of what is now called the Holocaust.
The pogrom occurred throughout Germany, which by
then included both Austria and the Sudetenland
region of Czechoslovakia. Rampaging mobs freely
attacked Jews in the street, in their homes and
at their places of work and worship. At least 96
Jews were killed and hundreds more injured, more
than 1,000 synagogues were burned (and possibly
as many as 2,000), almost 7,500 Jewish businesses
were destroyed, cemeteries and schools were vandalized,
and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration
camps. Clear documentation confirms that police
and fire departments were organized to aid and
facilitate the pogrom. In the aftermath, a wide-ranging
set of anti-Semitic laws were passed which had
the clear intent of “Aryanizing” the
German economy.
The contrast between the commemorations of Kristallnacht
and Veteran’s Day, coming up in two days
on November 11, was not lost on rally goers.
“It must be an outrage to surviving World
War II veterans that a former Nazi guard has been
living freely in the United States for years, when
so many U.S. soldiers died fighting the Nazi’s
during World War II,” said Rambam junior Ariel
Lindenfeld.
 Added junior Eric Keehn: “War criminals
should not be free in our country, getting all
the benefits of a free life here. We need to get
the message out to the American people that there
are Nazis still at large, and that they should
not be tolerated in this country.”
The Bilaniuk case is a result of OSI’s ongoing
efforts to identify, investigate, and take legal
action against former participants in Nazi persecution
living in the United States. Seventy-one individuals
who assisted in Nazi persecution have been stripped
of U.S. citizenship and 57 such persons have been
removed from the United States since OSI began
operations in 1979. In addition, more than 160
suspected Nazi persecutors have been blocked from
entering the country.
“It is an important educational and moral
lesson that we teach our students,” said
Rabbi Friedman, “to speak out against evil,
wherever it is found."
- Photos by junior Zoli Honig & Daniel
Lax
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