Old Man From North Center Has Nazi Past

By Andrew Peerless in News on Aug 2, 2005 1:40PM

You just never know who that white-haired old dude that lives around the corner really is, do you?

In the North Center neighborhood, an 86-year-old Ukranian carpenter named Osyp Firishchak is on trial for allegedly assisting Nazis in their quest to "cleanse" Jews from the earth during the 1940s. Firishchak, who has lived with his family in Chicago for fifty years, apparently worked for a Nazi-affiliated force called the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police and helped to round up many of the more than half-million Jews that lived in and around Lviv (a Ukranian city that was than part of Nazi-occupied Poland) for deportation to work or death camps. Recently-unearthed documents from the Ukraine reportedly prove Firischak's affiliation, and are the cornerstone of the prosecution's case against him.

The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations (OSI), who is trying Firishchak, has enlisted the help of a German historian to verify the documents' authenticity. Firishchak's attorney is expected to question the documents' ability to identify Firishchak specifically as a Nazi collaborator.

If convicted, Firishchak would be the 101st successful prosecution of a Nazi war criminal by the OSI.

The case is being tried in civil court, as opposed to criminal, with a sole intention of invalidating Firischak's citizenship. If the prosecution succeeds, he will likely be deported to Switzerland or the Czech Republic.

Court rendering of Firishchak courtesy of nbc5.com