Operation Last Chance - Convictions Obtained

Convictions Obtained

Operation Last Chance assisted in the prosecution and conviction of John Demjanjuk for his role in the torture and murder of Jews in various concentration camps, among other atrocities. Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian collaborator (sometimes referred to by camp inmates as Askaris) who became an American citizen in the 1950s, was found guilty of being a guard at the Sobibór death camp, where about 250,000 Jews were put to death.

After Demjanjuk was convicted in a Munich criminal court May, 2011, the Operation Last Chance team of investigators, attorneys, and German prosecutors began to focus on another Ukrainian national, a Nazi collaborator who had also illegally sought and obtained refuge in the United States, John Kalymon. In 2007, Kalymon had been stripped of his United States citizenship for falsifying his background on his immigration documents and naturalization papers.

The findings of the immigration judge were affirmed on appeal after the court agreed that Kalymon had been a member of the Ukrainian auxiliary police and also acted as a Lemberg ghetto guard assisting the Nazis in the liquidation of the Jewish population of Lemberg (Lwów, today Lviv, Ukraine), a city which once had the third largest Jewish community in Poland. The appeals court also affirmed the lower court's finding of fact that during the course of his collaboration with the Germans, Kalymon had caused and/or assisted in the murders of numerous innocent Jewish civilians while acting as a guard at the Lemberg Ghetto. It was on this basis that his deportation was ordered.

Like Demjanjuk, once the appellate process is exhausted, Kalymon "may be deported to Germany, Ukraine, Poland or any other country that will accept him..." based on the ruling of U.S. Immigration Court Judge Elizabeth Hacker. But even before that, Kalymon might sooner be facing extradition on war crimes charges as the investigation by Operation Last Chance continues and additional witnesses are being interviewed and charges are filed.