John Demjanjuk is a retired
Ukrainian-AmericanUkrainian Americans are citizens and permanent residents of the United States who have recently emigrated to the United States and are of Ukrainian ancestry. According to U.S. census estimates, in 2006 there were 961,113 Americans of Ukrainian descent representing 0.33% of the American population...
auto worker who gained notoriety after being accused numerous times of
HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
-related
war crimeWar crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
s.
Born near
KievKiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
in the territory of Ukraine during the Polish–Soviet War, just prior to the Kiev Offensive, which at the time was a
de facto part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Demjanjuk emigrated to the United States in 1952 and was granted citizenship six years later. He was
deportedDeportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
to
IsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
in 1986 to stand trial for war crimes, after being identified by Israeli
HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
survivors as
"Ivan the Terrible", a notorious prisoner/guard (KAPO) at the
TreblinkaTreblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...
and
SobiborSobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
extermination camps. He was accused of committing murder and acts of extraordinarily savage violence against camp prisoners during 1942–1943. He was convicted for crimes against humanity and
sentenced to deathCapital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
thereIn Israel, capital punishment is illegal in almost all circumstances. It is only legal in for certain serious crimes during wartime. Israel inherited the British Mandate of Palestine code of law, which included death penalty for several offenses, but in 1954 Israel abolished this penalty...
in 1988, but this verdict was later overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993 due to a finding of reasonable doubt based on evidence suggesting that this was a case of
mistaken identityMistaken identity is a defense in criminal law which claims the actual innocence of the criminal defendant, and attempts to undermine evidence of guilt by asserting that any eyewitness to the crime incorrectly thought that they saw the defendant, when in fact the person seen by the witness was...
, that Demjanjuk was not
"Ivan the Terrible" and had instead been a guard at other camps. After the trial, he was returned to his home in
Seven HillsSeven Hills is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. The population was 11,804 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Seven Hills is located at .According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all land....
, a suburb of Cleveland,
OhioOhio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, in September 1993. Demjanjuk had lived there since 1958, the year he formally
anglicizedAnglicisation, or anglicization , is the process of converting verbal or written elements of any other language into a form that is more comprehensible to an English speaker, or, more generally, of altering something such that it becomes English in form or character.The term most often refers to...
his name from "Ivan" to "John".
Demjanjuk was charged again in 2001, this time on the grounds that he had served as a guard at the Sobibor and
MajdanekMajdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army...
camps in occupied Poland and at the
FlossenbürgKonzentrationslager Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the Schutzstaffel Economic-Administrative Main Office at Flossenbürg, in the Oberpfalz region of Bavaria, Germany, near the border with Czechoslovakia. Until its liberation in April 1945, more than 96,000 prisoners...
camp in Germany. His deportation was again ordered in 2005, but after exhausting his appeals in 2008 he still remained in the United States, as no country would agree to accept him at that time. On April 2, 2009, it was announced that Demjanjuk would be deported to Germany, where he would stand trial. On April 3, a judge ordered a temporary stay on deportation, pending a judicial decision on the motion, filed the previous day, to reopen Demjanjuk's deportation order, on the grounds that deporting him would amount to torture under the applicable international convention. The stay was overturned on April 6.
On April 14, 2009, immigration agents began Demjanjuk's deportation, removing him from his home in a wheelchair. He was scheduled to fly to Munich from Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, but the legal order was again reversed and another stay granted by the court. On May 7, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Demjanjuk's appeal and on May 8, he was ordered to surrender to U.S. Immigration agents for deportation to Germany. On May 11, Demjanjuk left his Cleveland home by ambulance, and was taken to the airport, where he was deported by plane, arriving in Germany the next morning. On July 13, Demjanjuk was formally charged with 27,900 counts of acting as an accessory to murder, one for each person who died at Sobibor during the time he allegedly served as a guard. On November 30, Demjanjuk's trial began in
MunichMunich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
. It concluded on May 12, 2011, when he was convicted as an
accessoryAn accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal...
to the
murderMurder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
of 27,900 Jews and sentenced to five years in prison. He was later released pending appeal, and is now living in a German nursing home.
Background to Holocaust alleged involvement
Demjanjuk was born in Dubovi Makharyntsi, Ukraine. When interviewed in late December 2009, residents of Dubovi Makharyntsi declared that Demjanjuk got along well with the
Jewish families living nearbyJewish communities have existed in the territory of Ukraine from the time of Kievan Rus' and developed many of the most distinctive modern Jewish theological and cultural traditions. While at times they flourished, at other times they faced periods of persecution and antisemitic discriminatory...
. Before being pressed into the Soviet army, Demjanjuk worked as a tractor driver on a Soviet collective farm. In 1941, after Germany's attack on Soviet Occupied Poland, Demjanjuk was pressed into the service of the
Red ArmyThe Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
. After a battle in Eastern Crimea he was captured and became a German
prisoner of warA prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
and was moved to a German camp.
He survived the ordeal and was sent to the
Trawniki concentration campTrawniki concentration camp, in the village of Trawniki about 40 km southeast of Lublin in Poland, was an SS labour camp which provided forced labourers for a nearby industrial plant to work in appalling conditions with little food...
utilized for training guards recruited from Soviet POWs, later serving in Majdanek, Sobibor and Flossenbürg Nazi camps. Demjanjuk claims that, in early 1945, he joined the
Russian Liberation ArmyRussian Liberation Army was a group of predominantly Russian forces subordinated to the Nazi German high command during World War II....
(Russian: Russkaya osvoboditel'naya armiya, Русская освободительная армия, abbreviated in Cyrillic as РОА, in Latin as ROA, also known as the Vlasov army), led by
Andrey VlasovAndrey Andreyevich Vlasov or Wlassow was a Russian Red Army general who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.-Early career:...
, which was closely aligned with Nazi Germany against the Soviets.
Demjanjuk, his wife and their child arrived in New York City aboard the 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 personA displaced person is a person who has been forced to leave his or her native place, a phenomenon known as forced migration.- Origin of term :...
s' camp, moved to
IndianaIndiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
with their daughter and then to the Cleveland suburb of
Seven HillsSeven Hills is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. The population was 11,804 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Seven Hills is located at .According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all land....
, where Demjanjuk became a
UAWThe International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers , is a labor union which represents workers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and formerly in Canada. Founded as part of the Congress of Industrial...
diesel engine mechanic at the nearby Ford auto plant. Demjanjuk and his wife later had two more children.
In August 1977, the Justice Department submitted a request to the
United States District Court for the Northern District of OhioThe U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio is the federal trial court for the northern half 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
INSThe United States Immigration and Naturalization Service , now referred to as Legacy INS, ceased to exist under that name on March 1, 2003, when most of its functions were transferred from the Department of Justice to three new components within the newly created Department of Homeland Security, as...
after Demjanjuk was identified by five Holocaust survivors on a photo spread used in the investigation of
Feodor FedorenkoFeodor Fedorenko was a naturalized U.S. citizen, a former Soviet citizen, who was denaturalized, extradited to the USSR, sentenced there to death for treason and participation in the Holocaust and executed.-Biography:...
, 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 U.S. immigration applications.
Trial in Israel
In October 1983, Israel issued an
extraditionExtradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
request for Demjanjuk to stand trial on Israeli soil under the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law of 1950. Demjanjuk appealed his deportation with the case heard on July 8, 1985. During the appeal, the authenticity of the identity card was questioned when it was revealed that the card's number, 1393, had been issued in June/July 1942 with the seal of SS Commissioner,
Odilo GlobocnikOdilo Lotario Globocnik was a prominent Austrian Nazi and later an SS leader. He was an acquaintance of Adolf Eichmann, who played a major role in the extermination of Jews and others during the Holocaust...
, who had in fact been dismissed from this post in March 1942 at which time his seal was destroyed. The three identity cards supplied by the
KGBThe KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
that the experts had used to compare their paper and ink with Demjanjuk's card to prove its authenticity were also disputed. Among other issues such as graphic inconsistencies, the cards, all dated 1942, carried Waffen SS stamps despite them not taking control of the Trawniki until 1943. Two bore the signature of Corporal Teufel when he was at that time a Sergeant while the other card, which had been issued earlier in the year when Teufel was still a Corporal, had his rank listed as Sergeant. The cards were also signed by Captain Hermann Hoefle, who was actually a Major. The court ruled on this claim: the record before us lends no support to this very serious charge, and we reject it. Witnesses fully qualified to testify on the subject stated their opinions that the Trawniki documents were authentic. Even if this documentary evidence had been rejected, the eyewitness evidence alone was found sufficient. Since the district court did not rely on the "Trawniki card", its validity is not before the court. The appeal was dismissed on 31 October.
Demjanjuk was deported to Israel on February 28, 1986. He was put on trial between November 26, 1986, and April 18, 1988, before a special tribunal comprising Supreme Court Judge
Dov LevinDon Levin was an Israeli jurist and Supreme Court justice in the years 1982–1995.Levin was born in Tel Aviv to Eliyahu and Dvora Levin, in a family of rabbis and scholars, descendants of the Vilna Gaon and residents of Israel since the mid-19th century...
, Jerusalem District Court Judges Zvi Tal, and
Dalia DornerDalia Dorner was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1993 to 2004.-Biography:Dalia Dorner was born in Istanbul, Turkey. Her father, a wood merchant, Levy Greenberg, immigrated there from Odessa. Her family immigrated once again in 1944, this time to Palestine, where her father died...
.
The prosecution team consisting of Yonah Blatman, the State Attorney, Michael Shaked of the Jerusalem District Attorney's Office, Dennis Goldman and Eli Gabay of the International Section of the State Attorney's Office, Michael Horowitz and Gabi Finder and others, 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
CrimeaCrimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
in May 1942.
Demjanjuk was then, according to the prosecutors, brought to a German prisoner of war camp in Chełmno 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 three former prisoners identified Demjanjuk as "Иван Грозный" (Ivan Grozny, Russian for "Ivan the Terrible") of Treblinka, who operated the diesel engines sending gas to the death chamber. 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 testified during the trial that he was imprisoned in a camp in Chełmno 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
AlliesIn everyday English usage, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out between them...
in 1945.
On April 18, 1988, the court found Demjanjuk guilty of all charges. One week later it sentenced him to death by
hangingHanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
. Demjanjuk was placed in
solitary confinementSolitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is isolated from any human contact, though often with the exception of members of prison staff. It is sometimes employed as a form of punishment beyond incarceration for a prisoner, and has been cited as an additional...
during the appeals process.
Supreme Court ruling
On July 29, 1993, five Israeli Supreme Court judges overturned the guilty verdict on appeal. Their ruling was based on the written statements of 37 former guards at Treblinka that identified Ivan the Terrible as "Ivan Marchenko." U.S. officials had originally been aware, without informing Demjanjuk's attorneys, of the testimony of two of these German guards. However the Israeli justices mentioned how Demjanjuk had incorrectly listed his mother's maiden name as "Marchenko" in his 1951 application for U.S. visa. Demjanjuk says he just wrote a common Ukrainian surname after he forgot his mother's real name. The former guards' statements were obtained after World War II by the Soviets, who prosecuted USSR citizens who assisted the Nazis as auxiliary forces during the War. Most of the guards were executed after the war by the Soviets and their written statements were not obtained by Israeli authorities until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Russian historian Sergei Kudryashov wrote about the defence's claims of a KGB plot to frame Demjanjuk if that was the case, then the files from the KGB that established that Demjanjuk was not "Ivan the Terrible" would never had been made available to the defence
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 facts proved the appellant's participation in the extermination process. The matter is closed — but not complete, the complete truth is not the prerogative of the human judge."
The court judgment also addressed evidence against Demjanjuk that was not included in his indictment. The judges agreed that Demjanjuk most likely served as a Nazi
Wachmann (guard) in the Trawniki unit and had been posted at Sobibor extermination camp and two other camps. Evidence to assist this claim included an Identification card 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. The 1949 statement of another Wachmann (Denilchenko), identified Demjanjuk in passing as someone who served with him at Sobibor in 1944 (a year after the camp was razed) and noted he had been born the same year as himself (1923). In 1979, Denilchenko made another statement adding that Demjanjuk was three years older than himself and had been in Sobibor in 1943. Demjanjuk's Trawniki certificate also implies that he served at Sobibor, as do the German orders of March 1943 posting the Trawniki unit to the area .
After Demjanjuk's acquittal, the Israeli Attorney General decided to release him rather than to pursue charges of committing crimes at Sobibor. Ten petitions against the decision were made to the Supreme Court. On August 18, 1993, the court rejected the petitions on the grounds that (1) the principle of
double jeopardyDouble jeopardy is a procedural defense that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same, or similar charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction...
would be infringed, (2) that new charges would be unreasonable given the seriousness of those of which he had been acquitted, (3) that conviction on the new charges would be unlikely, and (4) that Demjanjuk was extradited from the United States specifically to stand trial for offenses attributed to Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka, and not for other alternative charges.
Demjanjuk was released to return to the United States. In 1993, the
Sixth Circuit Court of AppealsThe United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Eastern District of Kentucky* Western District of Kentucky...
ruled that Demjanjuk was a victim of fraud on the court, as United States federal government trial lawyers with the Office of Special Investigations had recklessly failed to disclose
evidenceThe law of evidence encompasses the rules and legal principles that govern the proof of facts in a legal proceeding. These rules determine what evidence can be considered by the trier of fact in reaching its decision and, sometimes, the weight that may be given to that evidence...
, and the extradition order previously granted was rescinded. In a report submitted to the Sixth Circuit prior to the Israeli acquittal, federal judge
Thomas Wiseman, Jr.Thomas Anderton Wiseman, Jr. is an American jurist and Senior United States District Court Judge for the Middle District of Tennessee....
concluded that American federal officials had erred in asserting that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible, but that evidence instead pointed to Demjanjuk being a lesser SS agent. After the Court of Appeals remanded the matter to Judge Wiseman, Judge Wiseman dismissed the denaturalization petition proceedings in 1998, effectively restoring Demjanjuk's citizenship.
Transcripts of Demjanjuk's 1988 trial, and the character of Demjanjuk himself, appear in
Philip RothPhilip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
's 1993 novel
Operation ShylockOperation Shylock: A Confession is novelist Philip Roth's 19th book and was published in 1993.-Summary:The novel follows narrator "Philip Roth" on a journey to Israel, where he attends the trial of accused war criminal John Demjanjuk and becomes involved in an intelligence mission—the "Operation...
.
Restoration and revocation of U.S. citizenship
On February 20, 1998, Federal District Court
JudgeA judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
Paul Matia ruled that Demjanjuk's citizenship could be restored.
On May 19, 1999, the
Justice DepartmentThe United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
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 PolandThe General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
.
Demjanjuk was put on trial again in 2001, and on February 21, 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 April 30, 2004, a three-judge panel of the
6th U.S. Circuit Court of AppealsThe United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Eastern District of Kentucky* Western District of Kentucky...
ruled that Demjanjuk could be again stripped of his U.S. citizenship because the Justice Department had presented "clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence" of Demjanjuk's service in Nazi death camps. The United States Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in November 2004.
New deportation order
On December 28, 2005, an immigration judge ordered Demjanjuk deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine. 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. Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael Creppy ruled that there is no evidence to substantiate Demjanjuk's claim that he would be mistreated if sent to Ukraine.
On December 22, 2006, the
Board of Immigration AppealsThe Board of Immigration Appeals is the part of the Executive Office for Immigration Review that reviews the decisions of the Immigration Courts and some decisions of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. It is an administrative appellate body that is part of the United States Department...
(the Board or BIA) upheld the deportation order. On January 30, 2008, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied Demjanjuk's request for review. On May 19, 2008, the
U.S. Supreme CourtThe Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
denied Demjanjuk's petition for
certiorariCertiorari is a type of writ seeking judicial review, recognized in U.S., Roman, English, Philippine, and other law. Certiorari is the present passive infinitive of the Latin certiorare...
, declining to hear his case against the deportation order. The Supreme Court's denial of review meant that the order of removal was final; no other appeal was possible.
Deportation proceedings and actions
One month after the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to hear Demjanjuk's case, on June 19, 2008, Germany announced it would seek the extradition of Demjanjuk to Germany. The file on Demjanjuk was compiled by the special German office investigating Nazi crimes. Kurt Schrimm, who heads the office, said that investigators "have managed to obtain hundreds of documents and have also found a number of witnesses who spoke out against Demjanjuk". "For the first time we have even found lists of names of the people who Demjanjuk personally led into the gas chambers. We have no doubt that he is responsible for the death of over 29,000 Jews" at the Nazis' Sobibor death camp, he said. Kurt Schrimm said that Demjanjuk could be brought to Germany by the end of 2008; however, this did not occur
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. Some three months later, on March 11, 2009, Demjanjuk was charged with more than 29,000 counts of accessory to murder of Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor extermination camp. The
German foreign ministryThe Foreign Office is the foreign ministry of Germany, a federal agency responsible for both the country's foreign politics and its relationship with the European Union. From 1871 to 1919, it was led by a Foreign Secretary, and since 1919, it has been led by the Foreign Minister of Germany...
announced on 2 April 2009 that Demjanjuk would be transferred to Germany the following week, and will face trial beginning November 30, 2009.
Demjanjuk sued Germany on April 30, 2009, to try to block the German government's agreement to accept Demjanjuk from the U.S. His filing with the German Administrative Court in Berlin claims the procedure by which he is to be moved from the U.S. to Germany is illegal, and asks the Court to suspend the declaration by the German government that allows Demjanjuk to enter the country pursuant to U.S. deportation, until a court determination is made. The German Administrative Court rejected Demjanjuk's claim on May 6; Demjanjuk's German attorney stated that he would appeal the decision.
Filing of motion
On that same day—April 2, 2009—Demjanjuk filed a motion in an immigration trial court in
VirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
. 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, and was further upheld by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals; after these two appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court had, as noted above, denied any review. In connection with the motion to reopen, Demjanjuk also asked the immigration court to stay the removal order, pending the decision on whether or not to reopen the matter.
On April 3, 2009, U.S. Immigration Judge Wayne Iskra temporarily stayed Demjanjuk's deportation, but reversed himself on April 6. As the Government noted, a motion to reopen, such as Demjanjuk's, could only properly be filed with the Board of Immigration Appeals in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, and not an immigration trial court. The issuance of the stay by the immigration trial court was therefore improper, as that court had no jurisdiction over the matter. Accordingly, Demjanjuk re-filed his motion to reopen, and for an attendant stay, with the Board of Appeals.
Demjanjuk's motion to reopen argued that, under the circumstances, his deportation to Germany would constitute torture. His attorney stated that his health had deteriorated seriously in the last four years. Demjanjuk argued that his request was supported by the past actions of the very same Office of Special Investigations where in the Tannenbaum case the DOJ allowed another sick old man to remain in the United States who had admitted to mistreatment of prisoners in a Nazi camp. On April 10, the Board of Appeals found that "there is 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. This removed any obstacles to federal agents seizing him at any time for deportation to Germany.
The Government has responded to Demjanjuk's "torture" claim as a basis for reopening the deportation order — a case that was decided against Demjanjuk in 2005 and that has been thrice affirmed against him on appeal — by stating that his claim is "patently frivolous" and
[is an] ...incredible and unsupported surmise. . . . This is . . . a grotesque debasement of the word "torture", a characterization that makes a mockery of the terrible suffering inflicted on genuine victims of torture at places like the Sobibor extermination center. Ironically, [Demjanjuk]. . . has been confirmed by U.S. courts — including this Court — to have contributed to the mass-asphyxiation of thousands of civilians at a human extermination center [as part of] . . . the largest-scale tortures and murders in history.
Sixth circuit stay
On April 14, 2009, immigration agents removed Demjanjuk from his home in preparation for deportation. The same day, Demjanjuk's son filed a motion in the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit asking that the deportation be stayed, which was subsequently granted. The Government argued that the Court of Appeals has no jurisdiction to review the decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals, which denied the stay. Demjanjuk later won a last-minute stay of deportation, shortly after U.S. immigration agents carried him from his home in a wheelchair to face trial in Germany. The BIA denied Demjanjuk's motion to reopen his deportation case. The Sixth Circuit, whose stay of the deportation order remained in effect, asked lawyers for both parties to provide it with more information from the government, physicians and Demjanjuk himself. On April 20, the government filed a motion with the Sixth Circuit asking for the stay against deportation to be lifted, arguing that Demjanjuk had sought the stay in order to provide an opportunity for the BIA to rule upon his motion to reopen the deportation order. Since the BIA denied the motion, the government argued, the basis for the Sixth Circuit's stay was no longer valid, and the stay should accordingly be dismissed. The
Jerusalem PostThe Jerusalem Post is an Israeli daily English-language broadsheet newspaper, founded on December 1, 1932 by Gershon Agron as The Palestine Post. The daily readership numbers do not approach those of the major Hebrew newspapers....
also reported that the Simon Wiesenthal Center had declared Demjanjuk to be the most wanted Nazi war criminal on its list, displacing SS doctor
Aribert HeimAribert Ferdinand Heim was an Austrian doctor, also known as Dr. Death. As an SS doctor in a Nazi concentration camp in Mauthausen, he is accused of killing and torturing many inmates by various methods, such as direct injections of toxic compounds into the hearts of his victims...
. According to a spokesman for the Center, the revised ranking was intended to reflect the importance attributed to the U.S. efforts to deport Demjanjuk to Germany to stand trial.
Sixth circuit's lifting stay
On May 1, 2009, the Sixth Circuit lifted the
stayA preliminary injunction, in equity, is an injunction entered by a court prior to a final determination of the merits of a legal case, in order to restrain a party from going forward with a course of conduct or compelling a party to continue with a course of conduct until the case has been decided...
that it had imposed against Demjanjuk's deportation order. The Court stated in its opinion that :
Based on the medical information before the court and the government's representations about the conditions under which it will transport the petitioner, which include an aircraft equipped as a medical air ambulance and attendance by medical personnel, the court cannot find that the petitioner's removal to Germany is likely to cause irreparable harm sufficient to warrant a stay of removal.
The Court also ruled that it was unlikely that Demjanjuk could demonstrate that he would be "tortured" in Germany and that this claim did not sufficiently support his request for a stay. Although the stay was lifted, and the government free of legal constraints that prevented it from deporting Demjanjuk, his appeal for the substantive review of the BIA decision on the merits (wherein the BIA effectively upheld the deportation order itself, by refusing to reopen the case on the ground that "torture" in Germany was more likely than not) was still pending before the Court of Appeals. However, the Court stated in its opinion denying the stay (in the process of addressing the question of the extent to which Demjanjuk was likely to succeed on the merits of his motion to reopen) that:
...the petitioner has not shown a strong or substantial likelihood of success on the merits of his challenge to... the [BIA's] denial of his motion to reopen. At most, he has offered speculation that German authorities may not adequately attend to his medical needs while he is in ... custody.
Petition to Supreme Court
On Tuesday May 5, 2009, Demjanjuk announced through counsel that he was filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking review of the adverse decision of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that had denied his stay. His counsel expected the filing to be made on Wednesday May 6. The filing characterized the unanimous decision of the three-judge Sixth Circuit panel as "incomprehensible."
On Thursday May 7, 2009, the United States Supreme Court, acting through Justice
John Paul StevensJohn Paul Stevens served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from December 19, 1975 until his retirement on June 29, 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the oldest member of the Court and the third-longest serving justice in the Court's history...
, declined to consider Demjanjuk's case for review, thereby denying Demjanjuk any further stay of deportation. Justice Stevens issued his decision without comment. Demjanjuk's counsel thereafter stated that his client would not seek to have the entire Court consider Justice Stevens' decision and that accordingly all legal avenues in the United States to halt the deportation had been exhausted. The suit filed by Demjanjuk in Germany is not affected by the U.S. decision and as of May 7, that case is still pending on Demjanjuk's appeal from an adverse decision by the Administrative Court in Berlin.
"Torture" as basis for reopening the case
Demjanjuk's motion to reopen was based on the claim that he would be tortured as a result of being deported. Demjanjuk claimed that, because he was old and sick, transferring him to Germany would constitute "
tortureTorture in the United States includes documented and alleged cases of torture both inside the United States and outside its borders by U.S. government personnel...
" within the meaning of the
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or PunishmentThe United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is an international human rights instrument, under the review of the United Nations, that aims to prevent torture around the world....
(the Convention), and that this circumstance was sufficient to reopen consideration of his case. His attorney, John Broadley, argued before the BIA that deporting Demjanjuk would constitute torture because of his health problems, including pre-leukemia, kidney problems, spinal problems and "a couple of types of gout."To summarize the foregoing, his essential contention in his legal pleadings and public statements was, that it would be very hard on him, and perhaps life-threatening, to be taken away from his home in his present condition. He claimed that this circumstance would constitute "torture."
While Demjanjuk was removed from his house in a wheelchair and appeared to be "slack-jawed and unmoving," on April 23, 2009, federal prosecutors submitted surveillance video evidence taken after the removal of Demjanjuk; the footage showed Demjanjuk walking with no assistance to a car in a parking lot while "alert and engaged in conversation." They also provided the Court of Appeals with a medical report that supported their claim that Demjanjuk is medically fit to be moved to Germany; a flight surgeon who examined Demjanjuk while in government custody for alleged back pain later noticed that Demjanjuk "moved his back with apparent ease." The government lawyers stated that even if the court lifts the stay, they would defer deportation until at least May 1, to allow Demjanjuk time to file an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. On April 23, 2009, a group of students from The Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway petitioned the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the deportation order.
Deportation to Germany
Demjanjuk was deported to Germany, leaving Cleveland, Ohio, on May 11, 2009, to arrive in
MunichMunich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
on May 12. Upon his arrival, he was arrested and sent to Munich's
Stadelheim prisonStadelheim Prison, in Munich's Giesing district, is one of the largest prisons in Germany.Founded in 1894 it was the site of many executions, particularly by guillotine during the Nazi period.-Notable inmates:...
.
Demjanjuk deemed fit to stand trial
On July 3, 2009, prosecutors deemed Demjanjuk fit to stand trial. On July 13, 2009, prosecutors charged him with 27,900 counts of accessory to murder. Doctors have restricted the time Demjanjuk can be tried in court each day to two sessions of 90 minutes each, said Munich State Prosecutor Anton Winkler. Demnjanjuk's attorney said that due to the complexity of the evidence, the mandated short sessions could cause the trial to last three to five years. Due to this and what he called Demjanjuk's ill health, Demjanjuk's attorney called for the case to be closed.
On September 22, 2009, the
LvivLviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
Regional Council adopted an appeal to the
President of UkrainePrior to the formation of the modern Ukrainian presidency, the previous Ukrainian head of state office was officially established in exile by Andriy Livytskyi. At first the de facto leader of nation was the president of the Central Rada at early years of the Ukrainian People's Republic, while the...
Viktor YushchenkoViktor Andriyovych Yushchenko is a former President of Ukraine. He took office on January 23, 2005, following a period of popular unrest known as the Orange Revolution...
, Prime Minister
Yulia TymoshenkoYulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko , née Grigyan , born 27 November 1960, is a Ukrainian politician. She was the Prime Minister of Ukraine from 24 January to 8 September 2005, and again from 18 December 2007 to 4 March 2010. She placed third in Forbes Magazine's List of The World's 100 Most Powerful...
and the
Verkhovna RadaThe Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is Ukraine's parliament. The Verkhovna Rada is a unicameral parliament composed of 450 deputies, which is presided over by a chairman...
(Ukraine's parliament). Members of the Council asked them to intercede on behalf of Demjanjuk. The deputies also called the prosecution of Demjanjuk an "international conspiracy aimed at discrediting Ukraine and
UkrainiansUkrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
in the eyes of world public opinion"; they believed "Without a doubt, the materials of the case were forged and fabricated by
KGBThe KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
".
Displaced person claim
On April 21, 2009,
The AustralianThe Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....
reported that Demjanjuk registered in 1948 as a displaced person. This category was reserved mainly for former concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers. The
International Tracing ServiceThe International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany, is the internationally governed archive whose task it is to document the fate of millions of civilian victims of Nazi Germany. The documents in the ITS archives include original records from concentration camps, details of forced labour,...
, a German agency that maintains data on Nazi victims, provided a copy of Demjanjuk's March 3, 1948, application to
The Australian.
In that application, Demjanjuk claimed to be a refugee, sought assistance, and asked for transfer to
ArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. His application stated that he worked as a driver at the Sobibor concentration camp; it did not mention any work as a guard at that camp. When interviewed in connection with the story, historian Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg (
University of GiessenThe University of Giessen is officially called the Justus Liebig University Giessen after its most famous faculty member, Justus von Liebig, the founder of modern agricultural chemistry and inventor of artificial fertiliser.-History:The University of Gießen is among the oldest institutions of...
) stated that war criminals sometimes tried to escape justice after 1945 by presenting themselves victims of Nazi persecution, rather than as perpetrators.
According to
Gitta SerenyGitta Sereny is an Austrian-born biographer, historian and investigative journalist whose writing focuses mainly on the Holocaust and child abuse. She is the stepdaughter of the economist Ludwig von Mises....
's
The German Trauma (2000, ISBN 978-0-140-29263-3) there was a strong reason why Demjanjuk could have put down Sobibor extermination camp as the place where he worked from 1937 to 1943 as a farmhand (according to Sereny) in the application he made on March 3, 1948. Applicants for
displaced personA displaced person is a person who has been forced to leave his or her native place, a phenomenon known as forced migration.- Origin of term :...
status had to fill in a form that required them to say where they had been for the previous twelve years. Unless they could show that they had been living outside the Soviet Union on September 1, 1939, they could not, under the terms of the Yalta agreement, be accepted as displaced persons and would be returned to the Soviet Union. Officials of the International Refugee Organisation, which operated the
LandshutLandshut is a city in Bavaria in the south-east of Germany, belonging to both Eastern and Southern Bavaria. Situated on the banks of the River Isar, Landshut is the capital of Lower Bavaria, one of the seven administrative regions of the Free State of Bavaria. It is also the seat of the...
office, therefore encouraged applicants to select places outside the Soviet Union. Sobibor was such a place. Sereny further relates that at Demjanjuk's trial in Israel on the Treblinka charges, Judge Dov Levin had asked Demjanjuk, "Why did you put Sobibor?" Demjanjuk had replied that he had no idea what to put on the form and that another applicant had had an atlas and told him to put down Sobibor as there had been many Soviets there.
Evidence that Demjanjuk might have been at Sobibor rather than Treblinka contributed to his successful appeal against his conviction in Israel on the Treblinka charges. He was not prosecuted in Israel on any charges relating to Sobibor as,
inter alia, his extradition from the U.S. had been obtained on the basis of the Treblinka charges.
An August 11, 2010,
Esquire magazineEsquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
article written and researched by Scott Raab questioned the whole idea of Demjanjuk's trial, crime, and punishment, pointing out many of the absurdities of this particular case, stating specifically "Worse, Demjanjuk is essentially on trial not for anything he did, but simply for being at Sobibor. No specific criminal acts need be alleged, much less proved. Page through transcripts of previous Nazi trials and you'll find a rigorous focus on particulars, because that is what should be required to convict a defendant. No one in any such trial ever was convicted simply on the basis of being present at the scene."
Proceedings
On November 30, 2009, Demjanjuk's trial, expected to last for several months, began in
MunichMunich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
. Demjanjuk arrived in the courtroom in a wheelchair pushed by a German police officer.
Thirty-five joint plaintiffs have been admitted to file in the case, including four survivors of the Sobibor concentration camp and 26 relatives of victims. The entralrat der Juden in Deutschland] issued a statement in regard to the extradition and the trial, stressing their symbolic significance. "All NS (National Socialist) criminals still living shall know that there won't be mercy for them, regardless of their age. They have to be held accountable for their inhuman deeds."
In February 2010, Alexei Vaitsen, 87, a Holocaust survivor living in
RyazanRyazan is a city and the administrative center of Ryazan Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Oka River southeast of Moscow. Population: The strategic bomber base Dyagilevo is just west of the city, and the air base of Alexandrovo is to the southeast as is the Ryazan Turlatovo Airport...
, Russia who escaped from Sobibor during the 1943 uprising, claimed that he recognized Demjanjuk as being one of the camp's personnel in a radio interview in Russia; however, the prosecuting attorney and defense lawyer in Demjanjuk current trial were skeptical about this particular claim.
On April 14, 2010, Anton Dallmeyer, an
expert witnessAn expert witness, professional witness or judicial expert is a witness, who by virtue of education, training, skill, or experience, is believed to have expertise and specialised knowledge in a particular subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially and legally...
, testified that the typeset and handwriting on an ID card being used as key evidence matched four other ID cards believed to have been issued at the SS training camp at Trawniki. Demjanjuk's lawyer argued that all of the ID cards could be forgeries, and that there was no point comparing them.
On January 15, 2011,
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
requested a European
arrest warrantAn arrest warrant is a warrant issued by and on behalf of the state, which authorizes the arrest and detention of an individual.-Canada:Arrest warrants are issued by a judge or justice of the peace under the Criminal Code of Canada....
be issued for alleged Nazi war crimes while Demjanjuk was still on trial in Germany. Germany denied Spain's extradition request on June 9, 2011, citing jurisdictional concerns and insufficient evidence provided by Spanish authorities.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/06/12/3088101/german-court-rejects-demjanjuk-extradition-request
On April 12, 2011, a 1985 FBI report that had been marked secret for the previous 25 years was declassifed and found by reporters of the Associated Press News Media in the National Archives. It brought to light a judgement that the Nazi ID card that had been provided by a Soviet source to the U.S. was "quite likely fabricated" evidence.
On May 12, 2011, Demjanjuk at the age of 91 was convicted as an
accessoryAn accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal...
to the
murderMurder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
of 27,900 Jews and sentenced to 5 years in prison. The judge suspended the remainder of the sentence, noting Demjanjuk had already served two years during trial, was 91 years old, and had served 8 years in Israel on related charges that were later overturned.
Criticism
The unique nature of the legal argument he was convicted under has been noted. Christiaan F. Rüter, Professor of Law and expert on NS trials in Germany, who researched the subject at the University of Amsterdam for 40 years, expressed reservations against the commencement of proceedings stating that to him "it is a complete mystery, how anyone who knows the German jurisdiction up to now, would be able to assume that Demjanjuk could be sentenced based on the given evidence." The trial has been criticized for its lack of evidence other than an interview summary conducted by the
Soviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
KGBThe KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
of another prison guard who died sometime in the 1990s, and a Soviet-supplied ID card from the Trawniki camp that a 1985 report from the Cleveland office of the FBI concluded was "quite likely" a KGB forgery.
See also
- Algimantas Dailidė
Algimantas Mykolas Dailidė is a former Lithuanian Security Police official. After the war, Dailidė sought refuge in the United States, saying he had been a "forester." While in the United States, Dailidė was a real estate agent until he retired to Gulfport, Florida...
- Feodor Fedorenko
Feodor Fedorenko was a naturalized U.S. citizen, a former Soviet citizen, who was denaturalized, extradited to the USSR, sentenced there to death for treason and participation in the Holocaust and executed.-Biography:...
- Bohdan Koziy
Bohdan Koziy was a Ukrainian war criminal and member of the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei .-Wartime activities:...
- Karl Linnas
Karl Linnas was an Estonian who was sentenced to capital punishment during the Holocaust trials in Soviet Estonia in 1961. He was later deported from the United States to the Soviet Union...
- Erich Lachmann
Erich Gustav Willie Lachmann was a police auxiliary and SS-Scharführer who participated in the "Operation Reinhard" in the Sobibor extermination camp.Lachmann was born in Liegnitz on November 6, 1909...
- Arthur Rudolph
Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph was a German rocket engineer and member of the Nazi party who played a key role in the development of the V-2 rocket. After World War II he was brought to the United States, subsequently becoming a pioneer of the United States space program. He worked for the U.S...
External links