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Karl Linnas, deported
shaken that Neal had methodically
deconstructed his analysis." The
witness appeared so physically shattered,
Rosenbaum says, that Sher
ordered one of his paralegals to
check on the man outside the courtroom.
As a government official, Sher
was careful to follow guidelines. As
OSI director he would not comment
on politics, citing the 1939 Hatch
Act restricting the political activity
of government employees. And
Rosenbaum remembers being
chided by his former boss for dressing
too casually on a day they were
traveling on official Justice Department
business. But Sher's acquiescent
streak had its limits. "People
here know that Neal has put his career
on the line on a number of occasions
to achieve a just result,"
Rosenbaum says.
One such case involved Karl
Linnas, a Long Island man accused
of heading the Tartu death camp in
Estonia. Even though the OSI had
obtained a court order to deport
Linnas to the Soviet Union,
Rosenbaum says, Sher was privately
ordered by his superiors at the Justice
Department to send Linnas to
Panama—considered a more politically
palatable place to send a former
American citizen. Sher would not go
along with the change, and Linnas
was sent to the Soviet Union, where
he died in 1987 just months after
his arrival.
One common question Sher confronts
in many of his speaking and
teaching engagements is what he
has come to call "the small-fry ar-
gument"—that hunting anybody but
the master schemers of the Holocaust
is a wasted effort, especially
because most of the alleged war
criminals are old men living out
their lives in relative obscurity. That
argument, he says in a rebuttal polished
from years of use, "reflects a
lack of sensitivity to what was going
on. People almost naturally get
desensitized because of the numbers
killed in the Holocaust. Six
million. You can't visualize individuals.
You just see a statistic." He
points to the OSΓs prosecution of
Bohdan Koziy, a Fort Lauderdale
man accused of killing Jews and
other civilians as a Ukrainian police
officer. (Koziy fled to Costa Rica after
losing his citizenship, but before
deportation hearings could begin.)
Among the specific charges against
Koziy, Sher says, was that while
confronting a 4-year-old Jewish girl
pleading for her life, "he put a gun
to her head and blew out her
brains." Some of the girl's surviving
relatives attended Koziy's trial
in Florida. "The point I make is that
for that girl and her surviving family,
the Final Solution, the Nazi regime,
was not Hitler or Himmler or
Eichmann, it was this guy. It took
hundreds of thousands of these
people, these so-called 'small-fry/ to
turn what would otherwise have
been a maniacal dream into a reality."
Aaron Breitbart, a senior researcher
at the Simon Wiesenthal
Center in Los Angeles, says U.S.
Nazi-hunting efforts serve an important
purpose for the nation's future.
"If you leave (suspected Nazi criminals)
alone, you're sending the
younger generation the wrong signals,"
Breitbart says. "What you're
telling them is Ίf you are smart
enough to avoid detection and capture
for a long time, society will reward
you by letting you get away
with the most heinous of crimes.'"
CORNELL MAGAZINE
40
Perhaps that's why Sher regularly
returns to Cornell to teach his
craft to students, many of them aspiring
attorneys. The Near Eastern
studies department frequently offers
his class, "Jurisprudence and the
Holocaust." He has also taught two
more specialized courses: one on
world response to the Holocaust,
and one on the case of Final Solution
mastermind Adolf Eichmann,
who was tracked down in Argentina,
kidnapped by Israeli agents and spirited
to Israel, where he was tried
and executed.
"It's always stimulating to deal
with undergraduates who clearly
have a real interest in this subject,"
Sher says. "I think that to these
people, many of whose parents or
grandparents lived through the war,
the subject matter is very compelling.
There's a sense that this is
something that cannot be forgotten."
he long lines at
the United States
Holocaust Memorial
Museum in
Washington and
the box-office success
of the film Schindler's List suggest
an enduring quality to the
memory of the Holocaust. What is
undeniable, however, is that the day
is coming when Nazi hunters like
Neal Sher will not have any targets
left to pursue.
"It's very important, while we
still have the chance, that the record
be as voluminous as possible—to
document what happened, who is
responsible, who suffered," he says.
"Because there are too many people
who are willing to deny what happened
or to minimize what happened.
That, I'm sure, will increase
when there are no longer survivors
around. It's important that we build
as strong a record as possible so we
don't give Hitler a posthumous victory."
a
Laurence Arnold '88 is a reporter
for the Asbury, NJ, Park Press.