1/1 - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

1EYVE DONE."
he first thing a
visitor to Sher's
OSI office saw
was a framed
copy of a New
York Post front
page proclaiming, "U.S. to Bar Waldheim."
It was the most prominent
reminder of the time the OSI took
on its most prominent target: Austrian
President Kurt Waldheim, the
former secretary-general of the
United Nations, who is now on the
U.S. "Watch List" of foreigners not
allowed into the country. "Here was
the duly elected head of state of a
friendly country who was declared
ineligible to come in," Sher explains
with evident satisfaction. "It was
very significant in that it demonstrated
in almost a textbook sense
that this is a country of laws."
The case against Waldheim was
prompted by a 1986 controversy in
Austria about Alexander Loehr, the
father of the modern Austrian Air
Force, who after the war had been
executed by the Yugoslavian government
as a war criminal. During
a nationwide debate over the propriety
of building a memorial to
Loehr, an Austrian magazine mentioned,
merely in passing, that no
less upstanding a citizen than
Waldheim had served under him.
The World Jewish Congress assigned
investigators to the case.
They quickly found both a damning
photograph of Waldheim in a Nazi
uniform and a U.S. Army document
listing known war criminals:
Waldheim's name was on the list.
The OSI began its own investigation,
which resulted in the addition
of Waldheim's name to the "Watch
List."
That move stands as one of the
OSΓs most celebrated achievements.
Yet it also points up the limits
inherent in its work. Despite the
heinous nature of the crimes committed
during the Holocaust, the
OSI is limited to striking back with
largely symbolic rejoinders, such as
stripping citizenship or preventing
entrance into the country. Even
when holding evidence of murder or
torture, the OSI cannot put a defendant
in jail for a single day. "There's
a general frustration in the work, because
I can only do what I have authority
to do under the law," Sher
says. "When it comes to bringing to
justice Nazi war criminals, it goes
without saying that so many will go
to their graves, so many perpetrators,
having never been called to account
for what they've done."
But if the Waldheim case represents
the high point of U.S. Nazi
hunting, the nadir is the prosecution
of Frank Walus, a Chicago man
accused of murdering Polish Jews
while serving in the S.S., Hitler's
elite military force. A court of appeals
overturned a 1978 denaturalization
order against Walus, saying
the government's case appeared
questionable in light of evidence that
arose after the trial. During the appeals
process the OSI was formed
to take control of Nazi cases, and
one of its first major decisions was
not to pursue a retrial of Walus. For
his part, Walus became an angry
critic of U.S. Nazi hunting and his
case has become a rallying point for
anti-OSI sentiment. "The constant
caterwauling of the media calling
(Walus) a 'Nazi war criminal' irreparably
damaged his reputation,"
wrote the National Confederation of
American Ethnic Groups Inc., in one
of its many letters to public officials
criticizing the OSI. "His entire life
savings were expended in defending
himself from the OSI scoundrels."
Although Sher usually loses
little sleep over the fate of the
people he prosecutes, he acknowledges
spending "sleepless nights"
deciding whether to pursue a case
against Jacob Tannenbaum, the only
Jew targeted thus far by the OSI.
While held at the Goerlitz concentration
camp, Tannenbaum allegedly
served as a "kapo"—a prisoner who
cooperated with the Germans by
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39
overseeing fellow inmates. "We
found dozens of witnesses all over
the world who gave hair-raising testimony
about his brutality," Sher
says. Tannenbaum, who became ill
during the litigation, agreed to relinquish
his U.S. citizenship and died
about a year later. "There's no question
he started out as a victim," adds
Sher. "But it seems to me that
there's a line that has to be drawn
between a victim and someone who
becomes a cold-blooded murderer.
No matter where that line was
drawn, Tannenbaum stepped way
over it."
Sher micro-managed the work of
the OSI, staying much more involved
with individual cases than
had his two predecessors. Rosenbaum,
a close friend as well as
Sher's principal deputy, describes
Sher's management philosophy as
"leading by example." "He got into
the trenches in a number of our
prosecutions, and an even larger
number of investigations," says
Rosenbaum, who as general counsel
to the World Jewish Congress
in 1986 directed the initial investigation
of Waldheim. "He continued
to find each new case to be an assault
against human decency."
Rosenbaum remembers watching
Sher handle the case against
Liusdas Kairys, a Chicago man who,
after six years of litigation, was in
1987 ordered deported to Germany
(the case is still being appealed). On
Kairys's side was the former head
of the Chicago police department's
forensics lab, who was prepared to
testify that the key piece of evidence—an
S.S. identity card with
Kairys's name and photo on it—was
a forgery. When the witness took
the stand, "Neal performed an aggressive,
but not abusive, cross-examination,"
Rosenbaum recalls. "By
the time Neal finished with him, [the
witness had] admitted on the stand
that this document was more likely
authentic than forged. I watched the
defense table and they were
stunned. He left the stand quite