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John Demjanjuk
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John Demjanjuk, born Ivan Demjanjuk (born April 3, 1920) is an Ukrainian-born retired auto worker and naturalized United States citizen, who gained notoriety after being accused of war crimes.
Early life
Demjanjuk was born in Dubovye Makharintsy, Kiev Oblast, Ukraine and migrated to the United States in 1951. He was later sentenced to death for war crimes, based on his identification by Israeli Holocaust survivors as "Ivan the Terrible", a notorious SS guard at the Treblinka extermination camp during the period 1942-1943 who committed murder and acts of extraordinarily savage violence against camp prisoners.
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John Demjanjuk, born Ivan Demjanjuk (born April 3, 1920) is an Ukrainian-born retired auto worker and naturalized United States citizen, who gained notoriety after being accused of war crimes.
Early life
Demjanjuk was born in Dubovye Makharintsy, Kiev Oblast, Ukraine and migrated to the United States in 1951. He was later sentenced to death for war crimes, based on his identification by Israeli Holocaust survivors as "Ivan the Terrible", a notorious SS guard at the Treblinka extermination camp during the period 1942-1943 who committed murder and acts of extraordinarily savage violence against camp prisoners. His conviction for crimes against humanity was later overturned by Israel's highest court by a finding of a reasonable doubt.
Background to alleged Holocaust involvement
Demjanjuk, his wife and their child arrived in New York aboard the USS General W. G. Haan on February 9, 1952. On November 14, 1958, Demjanjuk became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He and his wife, whom he met in a displaced persons camp, moved to Indiana with their daughter (they later had two more children) and then to Seven Hills, Ohio, where Demjanjuk became a diesel engine mechanic for the nearby Ford auto plant.
In August 1977, the Justice Department submitted a request to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio that Demjanjuk's citizenship be revoked on the basis that he had allegedly concealed his involvement with Nazi death camps on his immigration application in 1951. The request followed a lengthy investigation by the INS after Demjanjuk was identified by Holocaust survivors on a photo spread used in the investigation of Fedor Fedorenko, a Treblinka Concentration Camp guard. Fedorenko was later extradited to Ukraine on his admission that he was such a guard and that he lied on his US immigration applications.
On June 23, 1981, District Court Judge Frank J. Battisti ruled that Demjanjuk had lied on his application, that he had served as an SS guard at Treblinka and for a brief period at Sobibór, and that he had undergone training at the Trawniki SS training camp. Demjanjuk's attorneys appealed this ruling.
Trial in Israel
In October 1983, Israel issued an extradition request for Demjanjuk to stand trial on Israeli soil under the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law of 1950. Demjanjuk was deported to Israel on February 28, 1986. He was put on trial between February 16, 1987 and April 18, 1988. The prosecution team consisting of the State Attorney, Yona Blatman, Michael Shaked, a senior litigator from the Jerusalem District Attorneys Office, Michael Hurwitz, of the Central District Attorneys Office, Eli Gabay of the International Section of the State Attorneys Office, as well as other staff claimed during the trial that Demjanjuk had been recruited into the Soviet army in 1940, and that he had fought until he was captured by German troops in the eastern Crimea in May 1942.
Demjanjuk was then, according to the prosecutors, brought to a German prisoner of war camp in Kulm in July 1942. Prosecutors claimed that Demjanjuk volunteered to collaborate with the Germans and was sent to the camp at Trawniki, where he was trained to guard prisoners and was given a firearm, a uniform, and an ID card with his photograph. The principal allegation was that Demjanjuk was "Ivan Grozny" or "Ivan the Terrible" of Treblinka, who operated the diesel engines at the camp's gas chambers. Prosecutors based part of these allegations on an ID card, but defense attorneys countered that the card was forged by Soviet authorities to discredit Demjanjuk. The card had Demjanjuk's photograph, which he identified as his picture at the time, as well as signatures of various Nazi officers who were deposed and confirmed the authenticity of their signatures. The paper and ink on the card were tested by internationally renowned experts who confirmed that the card was authentic. The original of the card was presented in court in Israel as supplied by the Soviets. Demjanjuk admitted that the scar under his armpit was an SS tattoo which he removed after the war. During the trial, Demjanjuk was again identified on the photo spread by Otto Horn, a former Nazi guard at Treblinka.
Demjanjuk himself testified during the trial that he was imprisoned in a camp in Chelmno until 1944, when he was transferred to another camp in Austria, where he remained until he joined an anti-Soviet Russian military unit funded by the German government until the surrender of Germany to the Allies in 1945.
On April 25, 1988, a Jerusalem district court headed by Judges Dov Levin, Zvi Tal and Dalia Dorner convicted Demjanjuk and sentenced him to death by hanging. Demjanjuk was placed in solitary confinement until August 1993, when five Israeli Supreme Court judges ruled that there was a reasonable doubt raised due to the passage of time and the spoliation of evidence.
Their ruling was based partly on the written statements of former guards at Treblinka that Ivan the Terrible's true surname was Marchenko, not Demjanjuk. However, Demjanjuk had listed his mother's maiden name as "Marchenko" in his application for U.S. visa, and he says he did this because he forgot her real name and just wrote a common Ukrainian name. The former guards' statements were obtained after World War II by the Soviets, who prosecuted Ukrainians who assisted the Nazis as auxiliary forces during the War.
Demjanjuk was released to return to the United States. In 1993, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Demjanjuk was a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, as federal prosecutors had deliberately withheld evidence, and his sentence was overturned.
The prosecution was certain at least that it had sufficient evidence that Demjanjuk volunteered and served as a Nazi Wachmann (guard) in the Trawniki unit. Evidence to assist this claim included a certificate from Trawniki bearing Demjanjuk's picture and his exact personal information - allegedly found in the Soviet archives - in addition to German documents that mentioned Wachmann Demjanjuk and mentioned his date and place of birth. Statements of another Wachmann (Denilchenko), both in 1949 and again in 1979, identified Demjanjuk as the Wachmann who served with him at Sobibor. Demjanjuk's Trawniki certificate also implies that he served at Sobibor, as do the German orders of March 1943 posting the Trawniki unit to this area.
On appeal, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the guilty verdict and ordered Demjanjuk's release; noting that a further trial would violate double jeopardy, that Demjanjuk had been extradited to stand trial for Ivan the Terrible's crimes and not any others, that "on the basis of the evidence available, it was unlikely Demjanjuk would be convicted of the alternative charges, and that risking a further acquittal was not in the public interest."
The Israeli Supreme Court's 405-page ruling read: "The main issue of the indictment sheet filed against the appellant was his identification as Ivan the Terrible, an operator of the gas chambers in the extermination camp at Treblinka ... By virtue of this gnawing [new evidence indicating mistaken identity] ... we restrained ourselves from convicting the appellant of the horrors of Treblinka. Ivan Demjanjuk has been acquitted by us, because of doubt, of the terrible charges attributed to Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka. This was the proper course for judges who cannot examine the heart and mind, but have only what their eyes see and read." They also added "The matter is closed-but not complete, the complete truth is not the prerogative of the human judge."
New charges and deportation
On February 20, 1998, Federal District Court Judge Paul Matia ruled that Demjanjuk's citizenship could be restored. On May 20, 1999, the Justice Department filed a new civil complaint against Demjanjuk.
No mention was made in the new complaint of the previous allegations that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible. Instead, the complaint alleged that Demjanjuk served as a guard at the Sobibór and Majdanek camps in Poland under German occupation and at the Flossenburg camp in Germany. It additionally accused Demjanjuk of being a member of an SS-run unit that took part in capturing nearly two million Jews in the General Government of Poland. Demjanjuk was put on trial again in 2001, and in February 2002, Matia ruled that Demjanjuk had not produced any credible evidence of his whereabouts during the war and that the Justice Department had proved its case against him.
On May 1, 2004, a three-judge panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Demjanjuk could be again stripped of his US citizenship because the Justice Department had presented "clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence" of Demjanjuk's service in Nazi death camps. Demjanjuk vowed to appeal the ruling.
On December 28, 2005, an immigration judge ordered Demjanjuk deported to Ukraine. "Having marked Mr. Demjanjuk with blood scent, the government wants to drop him into a shark tank," his lawyer, John Broadley, said during the hearing. Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael Creppy ruled that there is no evidence to substantiate Demjanjuk's claim that he would be mistreated if deported.
On December 22 2006, the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld the deportation order, stating "Simply put, the respondent's arguments regarding the likelihood of torture are speculative and not based on evidence in record". On January 30, 2008, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied Demjanjuk's request for review.
Even if Demjanjuk loses all appeals, he would remain in the United States if no other country is willing to accept him. In that case, Demjanjuk would become a stateless alien and would lose all Social Security benefits.
On May 19 2008 the U. S. Supreme Court denied Demjanjuk's petition for certiorari, declining to hear his case against the deportation order.
On June 19, 2008 Germany announced it will seek the extradition of Demjanjuk to Germany to be tried on charges that he was responsible for killing 29,000 Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor extermination camp. Germany's top Holocaust crimes prosecutor, Kurt Schrimm, said that there is enough evidence to convict Demjanjuk. He said that Demjanjuk could be brought to Germany by the end of the year.
On November 10, 2008, German federal prosecutor Kurt Schrimm directed prosecutors to file in Munich for extradition, since Demjanjuk once lived there.
On December 9, 2008, a German federal court declared that Demjanjuk could be tried for his alleged role in the Holocaust.
External links
- The New Republic, September 13, 1993. Volume 209, Issue 11.
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