Demjanjuk, John°
DEMJANJUK, JOHN°
DEMJANJUK, JOHN ° (Ivan ; 1920– ), Nazi death camp guard. Born in the Ukrainian village of Dub Macharenzi, Demjanjuk survived the famine in the Ukraine and was drafted into the Soviet Army at the start of World War ii. Sustaining an injury to the back, he was treated in several hospitals before being returned to the front. During the battle of Kerch he was taken prisoner by the Germans. Recruited in a German prisoner-of-war camp, Demjanjuk was trained to be a Nazi camp guard, an auxiliary (watchman), at the Trawniki training camp in Lublin, Poland, where he was issued identity card 1393 and was dispatched to serve at several concentration and extermination camps until the war's end. Arriving in the United States in 1952, Demjanjuk concealed his Nazi service and gained admittance to the U.S. and eventually U.S. citizenship in 1958, living in Cleveland and working at a Ford auto plant.
In 1975, U.S. officials received information alleging that Demjanjuk had been a Nazi death camp guard at Sobibor. In 1976, his picture was sent to the Israeli police for investigation. Over the following years 18 Holocaust survivors would identify Demjanjuk as a guard at Treblinka, and several would identify him to police and in court as the gas chamber operator "Ivan" at the Treblinka death camp. Beginning in 1977, a series of legal actions ensued in the United States in which Demjanjuk was denaturalized and stripped of his U.S. citizenship (1981), ordered deported (1984), and extradited to stand trial in Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity (1986), the first person to be so charged since Adolf Eichmann in 1961.
In 1987, the District Court of Israel put Demjanjuk on trial and broadcast the proceedings live on radio and on Israeli tv. Thousands attended the trial, giving an immediacy to the horrors of the Holocaust for a new generation. The trial lasted 18 months and involved the testimony of five Holocaust survivors and many experts on history as well as forensic experts who authenticated Demjanjuk's Nazi service id card #1393, the original of which had been uncovered in Soviet archives and delivered to the Israeli authorities. In April 1988, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death. However, during the course of the appeal to Israel's Supreme Court, depositions of former Nazi guards tried in the Soviet Union in the late 1970s identified a different person named Ivan as the gas chamber operator at Treblinka. Even though the persons who gave the depositions were not known to be alive or cross-examined, the Supreme Court of Israel decided that this created enough of a doubt to reverse the decision against Demjanjuk. Although the court concluded that Demjanjuk himself was not innocent and had served the Nazis, nonetheless the Supreme Court of Israel ruled in 1993 that since the center of gravity of the case revolved around the six-month period between September 1942 and March 1943 when Demjanjuk was alleged to have been at Treblinka and Demjanjuk had not had a full opportunity to defend himself against charges of being at other death camps such as Sobibor, and that a new trial might contravene Israel's law against double jeopardy, and given that Demjanjuk had already spent eight years in Israeli prison in solitary confinement, the Supreme Court of Israel decided to release Demjanjuk and return him to the United States.
Back in the U.S., American courts found that U.S. prosecutors had known of these Russian testimonies and acted improperly. The courts vacated the extradition order against Demjanjuk, allowing him to remain in the U.S. (1993) and then set aside the decision to denaturalize him (1998). Accordingly, in 1999 the U.S. government filed a new denaturalization suit against Demjanjuk. In the intervening years, more Nazi era official documents had been unearthed which confirmed Demjanjuk's service at several concentration and extermination camps such as L.G. Okswo, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Flossenburg and further bolstered the authenticity of the Trawniki id card #1393. Accordingly, Demjanjuk was again denaturalized (2002), which order was affirmed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2004. Demjanjuk, who continued to live in Cleveland, Ohio, appealed those decisions.
bibliography:
United States v. Demjanjuka, 518 F. Supp. 1362 (N.D. Ohio 1981), revoking Demjanjuk's citizenship and naturalization; Demajnjuk v. Petrovsky, 612 F. Supp. 571 (N.D. Ohio 1985), allowing Demjanjuk to be extradited to Israel; Demjanjuk v. Petrovsky, 10 F.3d 338 (6th Circ. 1993), reopening the case after Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel and acquitted; United States v. Demjanjuk No. C77–923, 1998 U.S. Dist. lexis 4047 (N.S. Ohio 1998), setting aside Demjanjuk 1, on the basis of prosecutorial misconduct; United States v. Demjanjuk, No. 1:99cv1193, 2002 wl 544622 (N.D. Ohio Feb. 21, 2002); United States v. Demjanjuk, No. 1:99cv1193, 2002 wl 544623 (N.D. Ohio, Feb, 21, 2002), revoking Demjanjuk's citizenship and naturalization; United States v. Demjanjuk, No. 02–3539 (6th Circ. 2004), affirming the denaturalization; T. Teicholz, The Trial of Ivan the Terrible: State of Israel vs. John Demjanjuk (1990); A.F. Landau, The Demjanjuk Appeal – Summary (1993), at: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, www.Israel-mfa.gov.il.
[Tom Teicholz (2nd ed.)]