Vera, also from Ukraine, told Cleveland.com that she lived through World War II and famine. The prosecution charged that he was the Treblinka killing center guard known to prisoners as Ivan the Terrible, and that he had operated and maintained the diesel engine used to pump carbon monoxide fumes into the Treblinka gas chambers. After 16 months of trial, proceedings closed in mid-March 2011. Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics, Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically, Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust, Explore the ID Cards to learn more about personal experiences during the Holocaust. When will the Demjanjuk case be put to rest? [122][123] On 10 April, the BIA found there was "little likelihood of success that [Demjanjuk's] pending motion to re-open the case will be granted" and accordingly denied his motion for a stay pending the disposition of his motion to reopen. At the trial, prosecutors said Demjanjuks job at Sobibor was to lead Jews to the gas chambers to be killed, writes Mahita Gajanan for Time. [78] During the trial, Demjanjuk was again identified on the photo spread by Otto Horn, a former German SS guard at Treblinka. In his third declaration Demjanjuk demanded access to a secret KGB file numbered 1627 and declared a hunger strike until he got it. [67] On 19 May 1999, the Justice Department filed a complaint against Demjanjuk to seek his denaturalization. Their video showed him walking unaided to an appointment. [6] He was deported from the US to Germany in that same year. [145], As part of the prosecution's case, historian Dieter Pohl of the University of Klagenfurt testified that Sobibor was a death camp, the sole purpose of which was the killing of Jews, and that all Trawniki men had been generalists involved in guarding the prisoners as well as other duties; therefore, if Demjanjuk was a Trawniki man at Sobibor, he had necessarily been involved in sending the prisoners to their deaths and was an accessory to murder. [146] The prosecution further argued, using Pohl's testimony, that Demjanjuk's choice after being captured by the Germans was guard duty or forced labor, not death, the Trawniki guards were a privileged group that was essential to the Holocaust, and that Demjanjuk's failure to desert, something many Trawniki guards did, showed that he had been at Sobibor voluntarily. In the records of the former Ukrainian KGB in Kiev, the Demjanjuk defense team found dozens of statements of former Treblinka guards whom Soviet authorities had tried in the early 1960s. Nevertheless, blood-type tattooing was never consistently implemented. [88] While there, carpenters began building the gallows that would be used to hang him if his appeals were rejected, and Demjanjuk heard the construction from his cell. Born in Ukraine, John (Iwan) Demjanjuk was the defendant in four different court proceedings relating to crimes that he committed while serving as a collaborator of the Nazi regime. [76], On April18, 1988, the Jerusalem District Court found Demjanjuk "unhesitatingly and with utter conviction" guilty of all charges and being Ivan the Terrible. Learn more about Vera here. In an attempt to avoid deportation, Demjanjuk sought protection under the United Nations Convention against Torture, claiming that he would be prosecuted and tortured if he were deported to Ukraine. [170], In 2019, Netflix released The Devil Next Door, a documentary by Israeli filmmakers Daniel Sivan and Yossi Bloch that focuses on Demjanjuk's trial in Israel. They did, however, consistently refer to an Ivan Marchenko, who had served as a gas motor operator at Treblinka from the summer of 1942 until the prisoner uprising in 1943, and who had stood out as a particularly cruel police auxiliary, perpetrating acts that were consistent with the memory of the Jewish Treblinka survivors. You liar! The Supreme Court upheld the lower court's rulings on the authenticity of the Trawniki card and the falsity of Demjanjuk's alibi but ruled that reasonable doubt existed that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible. He was sent back to Trawniki and on 26 March 1943 he was assigned to Sobibor concentration camp. [91]The Trawniki certificate also implied that Demjanjuk had served at Sobibor, as did the German orders of March 1943 posting his Trawniki unit to the area. The video, shot in Demjanjuk's living room, showed a smiling John Demjanjuk playing with a grandchild born during the trial . " It's all been lies from beginning to end," his daughter, Irene Nishnic, said through tears during his trial in Jerusalem in. [49] The defense also submitted the statement of Feodor Fedorenko, a Ukrainian guard at Treblinka, which stated that Fedorenko could not recall having seen Demjanjuk at Treblinka. SS authorities introduced the practice of blood-type tattooing into the Waffen-SS (Military SS) in 1942. The authenticity of the Trawniki card was affirmed by US government experts who examined the original document as well as by Wolfgang Scheffler of the Free University of Berlin during the hearing,[42][43] Scheffler also testified to the crimes committed by Trawniki men and that it was possible that Demjanjuk had been moved between Sobibor and Treblinka. [7][8] On 12 May 2011, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. Vera Demjanjuk, John Demjanjuk's wife, never believed her husband was Ivan the Terrible. While living in the United States, he was married to Vera Demjanjuk and they had three children. . [163] On 28 June 2012, the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled that Demjanjuk could not regain his citizenship posthumously. John Demjanjuk in 2010. Working as a mechanic at a Ford plant, he lived a quiet, suburban lifeat least until 1977, when the Justice Department sued to revoke his citizenship, claiming he had lied on his immigration papers to conceal war crimes committed at another Nazi extermination camp, Treblinka. [172] Following Demjanjuk's conviction, however, Germany began aggressively prosecuting former death camp guards. Just before he was sent to Germany, 19 News saw the same thing. Following a lengthy investigation and a 1981 trial, the US District Federal Court in Cleveland stripped Demjanjuk of his US citizenship. Based on eyewitness testimony by Holocaust survivors in Israel, he was identified as the notorious Treblinka extermination camp guard known as "Ivan the Terrible. The blood group tattoo was applied by army medics and used by combat personnel in the Waffen-SS and its foreign volunteers and conscripts because they were likely to need blood or give transfusions. But two newly released photographs may prove otherwise. 19 News is not saying where for fear it could become a lightning rod for protests or vandalism. Two grainy black-and-white pictures showing a man authorities believe to be convicted Nazi collaborator John Demjanjuk working at the Sobibor death camp were published by German historians on. [66] According to prosecutors, Demjanjuk had been recruited into the Soviet army in 1940, and had fought until he was captured by German troops in Eastern Crimea in May 1942. Sheftel focused the defense largely on the claim that Demjanjuk's Trawniki card was a KGB forgery. The motion sought to reopen the matter of the removal order against him; that order of removal had been originally issued by an immigration court in 2005, had been upheld by the BIA on administrative appeal in late 2006,[111] and was further upheld by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals; after these two appeals, the US Supreme Court had, as noted above, denied any review. Demjanjuk subsequently requested political asylum in the United States rather than deportation. US officials had originally been aware, without informing Demjanjuk's attorneys, of the testimony of two of these German guards. For three years she lived in the front line. [149], Demjanjuk declined to testify or make a final statement during the trial. Originally Vera Bulochnik, she and John met in a German camp for displaced persons, The New York Times reported. Vera yelled: Youre a liar! Several Jewish survivors of Treblinka identified Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible, key evidence placing him at the killing center. "[85], Demjanjuk further claimed that in 1944 he was drafted into an anti-Soviet Russian military organization, the Russian Liberation Army (Vlasov Army), funded by the Nazi German government, until the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies in 1945. He was assigned to a manorial estate called Okzow on 22 September 1942, but returned to Trawniki on 14 October. [48] In 1982, Demjanjuk was jailed for 10 days after failing to appear for a hearing. [58] The United States Supreme Court declined to hear Demjanjuk's appeal on 25 February 1986, allowing the extradition to move forward. At trial in Israel, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging in, what had been admittedly, a show trial focused on young people. After a federal appeals court upheld this decision, OSI filed a deportation proceeding in December 2004. Now, a photo has emerged from the Nazi death camp at Sobibor, a camp where John Demjanjuk was accused of serving. He died in 2012. By Robert D. McFadden. [20] OSI was unable to establish Demjanjuk's whereabouts from December 1944 to the end of the war. Included in their evidence was an ID card showing that Demjanjuk was transferred from the Nazi training camp Trawniki to Sobibor.. Shame on you! To the end, Demjanjuk denied that he had ever stepped foot in the Nazi extermination camp. Although Demjanjuk died before a German appeals court could review his conviction, German prosecutors successfully prosecuted subsequent cases against killing center and concentration camp guards using the same theory tested in the Demjanjuk case. Media related to John Demjanjuk at Wikimedia Commons. TTY: 202.488.0406, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center. [88] Demjanjuk said he just wrote a common Ukrainian surname after he forgot his mother's real name (Tabachyk). Germany later tried him for crimes at the Sobibor killing center. [159] As a consequence of his appeal not having been heard, Demjanjuk is still presumed innocent under German law. The trials of John Demjanjuk have attracted global media attention for three decades. OSI did not submit these deposits into evidence and took them as a further indication that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible, though none of the guards mentioned Demjanjuk having been at Treblinka. She was the same age as John Demjanjuks wife, but it is not yet confirmed if this is the same Vera. [94] Central to the new evidence was a photograph of Ivan the Terrible and a description that did not match the 1942 appearance of Demjanjuk. In a second photograph, researchers identify one man as Demjanjuk, but another man has a prominent left ear much like what is seen on Demjanjuks Nazi ID card. [76] The most important of these was Eliyahu Rosenberg. About 1.7 million Jews were murdered at Sobibor and two other camps in 1941-43. [153][154][155][156] Presiding Judge Ralph Alt ordered Demjanjuk released from custody pending his appeal, as he did not appear to pose a flight-risk. [139] On 30 November 2009, Demjanjuk's trial, expected to last for several months, began in Munich. Shame on you! [99], After Demjanjuk's acquittal, the Israeli Attorney-General decided to release him rather than to pursue charges of committing crimes at Sobibor. On May 19, 2008, the US Supreme Court declined to review his appeal. [136] Busch would also allege that the German justice system was prejudiced against his client, and that the entire trial was therefore illegitimate. [T]his is a piece of hard evidence, and there was not a lot of hard evidence at Demjanjuks trial, said Hajo Funke, a historian at Berlins Free University, per the Los Angeles Times. [3] They settled in Seven Hills, Ohio, where he worked in an auto factory and raised three children. [169] Author Philip Roth, who briefly attended the Demjanjuk trial in Israel, portrays a fictionalized version of Demjanjuk and his trial in the 1993 novel Operation Shylock. He was freed pending appeal of the conviction. [168], The 1989 film Music Box, directed by Costa-Gavras, is based in part on the Demjanjuk case. [48] Although Demjanjuk's Trawniki card only documented that he had been at Sobibor, the prosecution argued that he could have shuttled between the camps and that Treblinka had been omitted due to administrative sloppiness. "[148] As Nagorny had previously identified Demjanjuk from his US visa application photo, his inability to recognize Demjanjuk in the courtroom was seen as unimportant. [43] During the trial, Demjanjuk admitted to having lied on his US visa application but claimed that it was out of fear of being returned to the Soviet Union and denied having been a concentration camp guard. [83] Demjanjuk also denied having known how to drive a truck in 1943, despite having stated this on his application for refugee assistance in 1948; Demjanjuk alleged that he had not filled out the form himself and the clerk must have misunderstood him. One man appears to resemble Demjanjuk, but researchers at a German museum believe another is Demjanjuk. )[23] Demjanjuk later claimed this was a coincidence, and said that he picked the name "Sobibor" from an atlas owned by a fellow applicant because it had a large Soviet population. Another piece of evidence in the prosecution's case involved scars under John Demjanjuk's left arm, the remains of a tattoo identifying his blood type. [18] According to German records, Demjanjuk most likely arrived at Trawniki concentration camp to be trained as a camp guard for the Nazis on 13 June 1942. There is no evidence that POWs trained as police auxiliaries at Trawniki received such tattoos. Ukrainian guard at Nazi death camps (19202012), Loss of US citizenship and extradition to Israel, Verdict and Israeli Supreme Court reversal, Second loss of US citizenship and extradition to Germany, Death and posthumous efforts to restore US citizenship, Subsequent prosecutions of Nazi extermination camp guards in Germany, US Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, United Nations Convention against Torture, Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, List of denaturalized former citizens of the United States, "Seven Hills' John Demjanjuk, convicted Nazi guard, dies in Bavaria at 91", "Israeli judge: Demjanjuk was 'Ivan the Terrible', "Israel recommends that Demjanjuk be released", "John Demjanjuk, 91, dogged by charges of atrocities as Nazi camp guard, dies", "Convicted Nazi Criminal Demjanjuk Deemed Innocent in Germany Over Technicality", "John Demjanjuk: Things we are left to tend to think", "Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk dies aged 91", "Anger simmers in Demjanjuk's home village", " :: ", "Looking Back on the Demjanjuk Trial in Munich", "Sixty years later, alleged Nazi guard may stand trial", "Convicted Nazi criminal John Demjanjuk dies at 91", "Judge Rules Autoworker Must Lose Citizenship for Falsifying Past", "Nazi Deportation Trial Centers on Identity Card", "Defense Rests in Trial of Alleged Nazi Guard", "Ex-Nazi Suspect Loses Immigration Court Case", "Man Accused of Nazi Crimes to be Extradited to Israel", "John Demjanjuk: Prosecution of a Nazi collaborator", "Demjanjuk quoted: Guards only followed orders", "2nd witness calls Demjanjuk 'Ivan the Terrible', "Acquittal in Jerusalem; Israel court sets Demjanjuk free, but he is now without a country", "KGB evidence reopens the case of 'Ivan the Terrible': Holocaust: Recently released files bolster the appeal of the man convicted as a Nazi death camp monster", "Why Nazi trials must end: The story behind the likely acquittal of", "Decision of Israel Supreme Court on petition concerning John (Ivan) Demjanjuk", "Judge orders accused camp guard deported", "Accused Nazi guard Demjanjuk loses court appeal", "Germany seeks extradition of Nazi guard from US", "Court: 'Ivan the Terrible' can be tried in Germany", "Former Nazi camp guard charged 29,000times", "Former Nazi camp guard to be deported to Germany", "John Demjanjuk's trial in Germany to start 30 November", "U.S. judge allows deportation of accused Nazi guard", "Nazi suspect's deportation appeal rejected", "Demjanjuk removed from Ohio home on stretcher", "Nazi war crimes suspect granted emergency stay", "Alleged Nazi guard Demjanjuk hits legal brick wall", "Demjanjuk loses German court bid to block deportation", "Krankenwagen bringt Demjanjuk ins Untersuchungsgefngnis", "Germany files charges against alleged Nazi guard Demjanjuk", "Demjanjuk lawyer calls for case to be closed", "John Demjanjuk war crimes trial begins in Munich", "Man Tied to Death Camp Goes on Trial in Germany", "John Demjanjuk, 91, Dogged by Charges of Atrocities as Nazi Camp Guard, Dies", "Witness in alleged Nazi Demjanjuk trial under investigation for murder", "German court rejects Demjanjuk extradition request", "Demjanjuk convicted of helping Nazis to murder Jews during the Holocaust", "John Demjanjuk zu fnf Jahren Haft verurteilt", "Court finds Nazi camp guard guilty of assisting in Holocaust deaths", "Former US citizen convicted in Nazi camp deaths", "Convicted Nazi criminal Demjanjuk deemed innocent in Germany over technicality", "Demjanjuk family asks to bury Nazi war criminal in US", "Ukrainian political party leader says Demjanjuk was buried in US weeks after his March death", "John Demjanjuk's widow asks for hearing on citizenship of late husband, convicted Nazi war criminal", "US court: No posthumous US citizenship for Demjanjuk, convicted in war crimes probe", "Court rejects appeal for Demjanjuk citizenship", "Demjanjuk attorney files complaint against doctors", "Doctors Did Not Hasten Demjanjuk's Death", "Was John Demjanjuk Really 'Ivan the Terrible'? Until it is, there are always questions and no rest for those who accuse him and his family, who steadfastly defends him. The BIA denied Demjanjuk's motion to reopen his deportation case. The authorities at Trawniki issued such documents to men detailed to guard detachments outside the camp. [164][165] On 11 September 2012, the court denied Demjanjuk's request to have the appeal reheard en banc by the full court. He maintained his innocence, claiming that it was a case of mistaken identity. Demjanjuk's denial related both to the supposed operation of a truck's diesel engine by "Ivan the Terrible" for the gas chamber at Treblinka and to the SS's singling out of Ukrainians with experience driving trucks as Trawniki men. The evidence placing him at Sobibor was consistent with the information on Demjanjuk's Trawniki identification card and with Danil'chenko's testimony. That same year, German authorities expressed interest in prosecuting Demjanjuk on charges of accessory to murder during his service at Sobibor. Based primarily on the survivor identifications, the Israeli court convicted John Demjanjuk and, on April 25, 1988, sentenced him to death, only the second time that an Israeli court had imposed capital punishment upon a convicted defendant (the first being Eichmann). 2023 Smithsonian Magazine [117] The German foreign ministry announced on 2 April 2009 that Demjanjuk would be transferred to Germany the following week,[118] and would face trial beginning 30 November 2009. meaning "Terrible" in Polish and Russian. [37] While the government was preparing for trial, Hanusiak published pictures of an ID card identifying Demjanjuk as having been a Trawniki man and guard at Sobibor in News from Ukraine. Jewish organizations have opposed this, claiming that his burial site would become a center for neo-Nazi activity. [97] Simon Wiesenthal, an iconic figure in Nazi-hunting, first believed Demjanjuk was guilty, but after Demjanjuk's acquittal by the Israeli Supreme Court, said he also would have cleared him given the new evidence.
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