New York Paralegal Blog

It's a really tough and uncomfortable question to ask: how different was the racism of Nazi Germany from the racism in the United States, especially during the time of Jim Crow laws? Both periods involved horrific discrimination, violence, and the idea that one race was superior to another. But digging a bit deeper, we find some crucial differences in their ultimate goals and how their societies were structured. Let's break it down: Hitler's Germany: A Quest for "Purity" and Annihilation Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany was built on an extreme and terrifying idea: the world needed to be "purified" by getting rid of "inferior" races. Top Dog Race: They believed in an "Aryan master race" (mostly Northern Europeans, especially Germans) as the peak of humanity. "Subhuman" and Targeted for Death: Groups like Jewish people, Roma (Gypsies), Slavic people, and Black people were labeled "subhuman." The goal wasn...

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that POLINA BREYTER, a former caseworker and employee of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc. (the “Claims Conference”) who participated in a $57 million fraud scheme targeting programs administered by that organization that were established to aid the survivors of Nazi persecution, was sentenced today in Manhattan federal court to 18 months in prison. BREYTER pled guilty in May 2012 to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. She was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Griesa.

WASHINGTON -- William A. "Bill" White, the self-proclaimed commander of the neo-Nazi group the American National Socialist Workers Party, was convicted by a federal jury for threatening three individuals and for attempting to intimidate litigants in a federal housing discrimination lawsuit, the Justice Department announced. White was convicted today of three counts of communicating threats in interstate commerce, and one count of witness intimidation. According to the testimony at trial, from late 2006 through mid-2008, White targeted individuals and engaged in a pattern of threatening communications which resulted in those individuals fearing for their personal safety. These communications included late night telephone calls to the victims’ homes, during which he would identify himself as the leader of a white supremacist group; emails to the victims in which he would make threatening statements; and posting the victims’ names, addresses, phone numbers, and other personal in...

The Department of Justice has initiated removal proceedings against a Troy, Mich., resident based on his participation in violent acts of persecution while serving as an armed member of the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) in occupied L’viv, Ukraine, during World War II. The charging document, filed Aug. 27, 2009, in U.S. Immigration Court in Detroit, alleges that John (originally Iwan) Kalymon served as a member of the UAP from at least May 1942 to March 1944; that he personally shot Jews while serving, killing at least one; and that he participated in violent anti-Jewish operations in which Jews were forcibly deported to be murdered in gas chambers and to serve as slave laborers. "These charges once again demonstrate the resolve of the Department of Justice to deny safe haven in this country to human rights violators, no matter how long ago they committed their heinous acts," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer. "The ultimate removal of ...