Washington Lawyer - May/June 2024 - 24

FEATURE
ceeded in denaturalizing 86 Nazis, although some died before they
could be extradited or transferred to European jurisdictions prepared to
bring them to trial.
As the Nazi perpetrators died out, the need to continue OSI as an independent
agency lessened after 2010, although the government did prosecute
another Nazi case four years later. But the result was hardly satisfying.
" A good example of
how we raced Father
Time/Mother Nature
but couldn't always
win that race was on
July 23, 2014. We [the
Human Rights and
Special Prosecutions
Section and the
United States Attorney's
Office in the
Eastern District of
Pennsylvania] won
an extradition decision
[against] former
Auschwitz SS guard
Johann Breyer, a Philadelphia
resident ...
[who] died the same
day, " Rosenbaum
says.
Not surprisingly, some European countries - notably Germany and Austria
- did not want their old Nazis back and had little interest in pursuing
them in their courts. " Professionally, this has been the bane of my
existence, trying to persuade recalcitrant governments to do the right
thing, " says Rosenbaum. The Germans, in particular, " didn't like the press
attention that each of these cases would bring. "
It's worth emphasizing that the United States had no jurisdiction to criminally
prosecute Nazi war criminals. However, it could denaturalize and
deport those who misrepresented their participation in those crimes
when they immigrated here.
The number of prosecutions by OSI seems small, but the evidentiary hurdles
were high. Meticulous Nazi records from the concentration camps
of Eastern Europe, which would assist in prosecutions, fell into the hands
of Soviet liberators after the war. Prior to the end of the Cold War and the
fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, these materials were largely unavailable
to American investigators. But once they became accessible, the records
were a " treasure trove, " Rosenbaum says. Of course, eyewitness memories
were fading by then.
Additionally, the standard of proof for the OSI prosecutions is substantially
similar to the criminal standard of proof: beyond a reasonable doubt.
In a deportation case, the government must present " clear, unequivocal,
and convincing evidence [that] does not leave the issue in doubt. " (Klapprott
v. United States, 335 U.S. 601, 612 (1949)).
For OSI's successes, Rosenbaum credits Holtzman - who he says " kept
banging her head against the wall to get the unit transferred out of INS
[Immigration and Naturalization Service] and into the Department of Justice "
- and the increased willingness of the United States to be vigilant
about holding Nazi persecutors accountable.
A PROFOUND EFFECT
Rosenbaum's zeal for his work began long before he became a lawyer.
His late father, Irving Rosenbaum, was forced to escape with his family
from Germany in 1938 because they were Jewish. Later, Rosenbaum's
father served in North Africa and Europe during World War II, and at one
point he visited the Dachau concentration camp.
Rosenbaum learned about it as a teenager when he and his father were
stuck on the New York State Thruway in a snowstorm while taking a ski
trip together. " He said, 'I went to Dachau the day after the liberation.'
When I asked him, 'What did you see?' his eyes welled up with tears and
he [couldn't] speak, " Rosenbaum recalls.
It was the first time Rosenbaum had seen his father cry, and " it had a profound
effect. " Although the two often discussed Rosenbaum's work at
OSI, his father died in 2007 without ever having told him what he'd seen
that day at Dachau.
At OSI Rosenbaum perfected the " knock and talk " interview copied from
police, in which he would pop in on a suspected Nazi war criminal to see
what he could get him to admit about his past. Prior to this, the cases
were handled like civil matters in which individuals who came under the
government's radar as a possible Nazi war criminal would get a letter inviting
them to visit DOJ to address " questions that have arisen about
[their] wartime activities. " Rosenbaum wanted to start treating them like
criminal matters. He figured, " We may get the door slammed in our faces, "
but it was worth a try.
Rosenbaum's first such knock and talk was in 1981 when he visited the
Worchester, Massachusetts, tailor shop of Juozas Kisielaitis, a Lithuanian
Nazi collaborator. Kisielaitis denied any connection to Lithuania and
claimed he'd spent the war sewing military uniforms. When Rosenbaum
showed him his wedding picture from the Old Country, Kisielaitis " turned
pale " and admitted the truth. (More than 40 years later, Rosenbaum still
jokes about DOJ refusing to reimburse him for the parking ticket he got
while at the tailor shop that day.)
Rosenbaum's exploits read as if he were a character in a novel. Indeed,
he has ended up in a novel - as the Nazi-hunting government lawyer
Leo Stein in Jodi Picoult's 2013 New York Times bestseller, The Storyteller.
The fictional Stein, based on Rosenbaum's career, finds himself in a small
New England town helping an attractive young woman unmask an old
man as an Auschwitz camp guard. Rosenbaum laughs at the poetic license
Picoult took with his character and is quick to clarify: No, he's never
carried a gun on the job and, no, he's never committed the ethical sin of
having a torrid love affair with a witness.
MAKING UP FOR LOST TIME
For years Rosenbaum and his family have made sacrifices for his work,
both large and small. There were the many lost hours with his family that
by necessity he spent at work. His wife has taken plenty of vacations with
her best friends instead of with him. And, on a government salary, he
drove his mother's old 1966 silver Buick Skylark to work for years. His
mode of transportation hasn't improved much; today it's a 2001 Honda
Accord.
24 WASHINGTON LAWYER
* MAY/JUNE 2024
Washington Lawyer - May/June 2024

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