01.10.2009 12:19  70 years have passed since the beginning of the Second World War, but talks about its causes, aggressors and heroes, seem to last ever. Many politicians constantly try to find new pretexts to improve their country’s image to the prejudice of another. Somebody makes national heroes out of fascists accomplices, somebody takes down monuments to the Soviet soldiers, and somebody tries to rewrite history books. And nobody wants to remember that it was exactly the Russian people who beared the brunt of Hitler. Nobody wants to remember how the USSR had liberated Europe from the fascist occupation. Instead everybody tries to augment their services in the war against the fascist Germany.
Unfortunately, among Ukrainian politicians there are those, whose opinion in relation to the USSR’s contribution to the victory over Germany in the Second World War, to say the least of it, is difficult to be called univocal. Some of them make no secret of their negative attitude both towards the USSR and Russia, and openly support the revision of a number of historical documents.
On September 22 deputies of Lvov regional council during their regular session adopted an address to the President of Ukraine, where they ask Viktor Yuschenko to assume measures for liberation from the German prison of the Ukrainian Ivan Demianiuk, accused of complicity in murders in fascist concentration camps. The address to the President of the country was supported by 77 from 119 deputies of the Lvov regional meeting.
It is worth reminding that Ivan Demianiuk is accused of complicity in execution of 27 thousand Jews during the Second World War in the Sobibor death camp in Poland. The former Red Army soldier, that had yielded himself prisoner, saved his life, having become a guard in the death camp. Demianiuk’s cruelty was so big, that he was nicknamed Ivan the Terrible. After war the butcher emigrated to the USA. In 1988 Demianiuk was already tried in Israel and was ready to be condemned.
But for lack of available at that time evidence the trial was not brought to an end.
Another attempt to prove Demianiuk’s guilt was now made in Germany, where earlier this year after having observed all necessary procedures he was deported from the USA. His trial is to take place in October.
According to one of the initiators of Lvov people's deputies’ address, “over 30 years the American of Ukrainian extraction Ivan Demianiuk has been prosecuted. He is permanently charged with groundless accusations of complicity in destruction of Jews in Hitlerite death camps. No doubt, all this case papers were already fabricated and faked-up by KGB...”
Nevertheless, in the German court one does not consider the accusations brought against Demianiuk “groundless.” On the contrary, at the moment the investigation has sufficiency of evidence. But why is the deputy so sure that “all this case papers were already fabricated and faked-up by KGB,” remains an enigma.
The Lvov regional council’s address says that Demianiuk became “a symbol of the Ukrainian people one tries to abase.”
“Germans that have inflicted evil, unleashed war, annihilated millions of representatives of various nations, including the Ukrainian one, today try the Ukrainian,” the deputy Rostislav Novozhenets expresses his indignation. “To try Ivan Demianiuk in Germany is an extreme political cynicism: In the country, where, so to say, remaining nationalists are marching today, not having suffered a just punishment,
it is not serious to try the 89-years old Ukrainian, incriminating him to annihilation of Jews… “
It is difficult to say, what Lvov regional council tried to obtain by its message and it is more difficult to imagine that the Ukrainian people, representatives of one of the most heavily suffered from fascism nations, will take to the streets with banners, calling to liberate a man, who was at least involved in more than 27 thousand deaths.
So far the President of Ukraine has not reacted on this statement of “people’s deputies" of the Lvov region. 
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