[177][178] The photographs are part of a collection of 361 taken by Niemann from his career, with numerous photos from Sobibor. They used modern investigation tools such as biometrics to conclude this is the same person as Demjanjuk., This revelation marks the latest chapter in the long, convoluted story surrounding Demjanjuks wartime actions, a saga most recently depicted in the Netflix documentary series The Devil Next Door.. Demjanjuks son, John Demjanjuk Jr., dismissed the possible identification as baseless, telling the Associated Press Kerstin Sopke and Geir Moulson that the photos are not proof of my father being in Sobibor and may even exculpate him once forensically examined.. [173] In 2019, German prosecutors charged guards at a concentration camp as opposed to a death camp on the same rationale for the first time: former Stutthof concentration camp guards Johann Rehbogen and Bruno Dey[de]. [81] Additionally, Sheftel alleged that the trial was a show trial, and referred to the trial as "the Demjanjuk affair," alluding to the famous antisemitic Dreyfus Affair. Family and friends claim that Demjanjuk himself was the . But the trove of images, which was released by Niemanns descendants and will now join the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, undoubtedly holds significance beyond Demjanjuks case. None of them identified Demjanjuk as having served at Treblinka. They also gained an additional identification of the visa photo as Demjanjuk by Otto Horn, a former SS guard at Treblinka. Media related to John Demjanjuk at Wikimedia Commons. [29][9][pageneeded] They moved to Indiana, and later settled in the Cleveland suburb of Seven Hills, Ohio. You have no heartnothing!, After Demjanjuk died in 2012, Vera Demjanjuk was still saying that the Justice Department had done a dirty job, Cleveland.com reported. Demjanjuks citizenship was ultimately rescinded, and in 1986, he was extradited to Israel to stand trial. John Demjanjuk died in a German nursing home on March 17, 2012. He died in January and she said she hadnt spoken to him since March. By Robert D. McFadden. [135], Demjanjuk was represented by German attorney Ulrich Busch and Gnther Maul. [35], INS sent photographs to the Israeli government of the nine persons alleged by Hanusiak to have been involved in crimes against Jews: the government's agents asked survivors of Sobibor and Treblinka if they could identify Demjanjuk based on his visa application picture. [67], Demjanjuk was at first represented by attorney Mark J. O'Connor of New York State; Demjanjuk fired him in July 1987 just a week before he was scheduled to testify at his trial. [162], On 12 April 2012, Demjanjuk's attorneys filed a suit to posthumously restore his US citizenship. It is a card Demjanjuk disputed, but one a federal judge ruled was legitimate. [141] Because of the long pauses between trial dates and cancellations caused by the alleged health problems of the defendant and his defense attorney Busch's use of many legal motions, the trial eventually stretched to eighteen months. The Israeli Supreme Court, however, overturned the conviction, citing evidence that Ivan the Terrible was in fact a different man. Demjanjuk was an autoworker in Cleveland who was accused of being Ivan the Terrible, a Nazi concentration camp guard who committed terrible crimes. He and Vera had three children: John Jr., Irene, and Lydia, CBS reported. She wasnt able to go to Germany because of her heart problems. Its investigation reduced the list to nine individuals, including Demjanjuk. After the war he married a woman he met in a West German displaced persons camp, and emigrated with her and their daughter to the United States. Washington, DC 20024-2126 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. Born in Ukraine in 1920, Demjanjuk emigrated to the United States in 1952 and settled with his family in Cleveland. [112][113] The Supreme Court's denial of review meant that the order of removal was final; no other appeal was possible. [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. Hundreds of thousands of pages of previously unknown documents became available to both the prosecution and the defense. 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. These documents placed Demjanjuk at the Sobibor killing center as of March 26, 1943, and at the Flossenbrg concentration camp as of October 1, 1943. [59] Demjanjuk appealed his extradition; in a hearing on 8 July 1985, Demjanjuk's defense attorneys claimed that the evidence against him had been manufactured by the KGB,[60] that Demjanjuk was never at Treblinka, and that the court had no authority to consider Israel's request for extradition. Ten petitions against the decision were made to the Supreme Court. In 1979, the newly created Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the DOJ took over prosecution of the case. He was freed pending appeal of the conviction. He was sent back to Trawniki and on 26 March 1943 he was assigned to Sobibor concentration camp. [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. The son of famed John Demjanjuk has dismissed the claim that newly emerged photos of the Sobibor death camp show his father performing duties as a guard. Germany later tried him for crimes at the Sobibor killing center. [99], After Demjanjuk's acquittal, the Israeli Attorney-General decided to release him rather than to pursue charges of committing crimes at Sobibor. They married and were still living in the camps in the 1950s when she gave birth to Lydia. [63] The prosecution conceived of the trial as a didactic trial on the Holocaust in the manner of the earlier trial of Adolf Eichmann. John Demjanjuk : Untangling "Ivan the Terrible" - Jewish Virtual Library [32][36] Lawyers at the US Office of Special Investigations (OSI), in the Department of Justice, valued the identifications made by these survivors, as they had interacted with and seen "Ivan the Terrible" over a protracted period of time. 19 News is not saying where for fear it could become a lightning rod for protests or vandalism. [86], Following closing statements, the defense also submitted the statement of Ignat Danilchenko, information which had been obtained through the US Freedom of Information but had not previously been made available to the defense by OSI. The file on Demjanjuk was compiled by the German Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes. [32] INS quickly discovered that Demjanjuk had listed his place of domicile from 1937 to 1943 as Sobibor on his US visa application of 1951. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Now John Jr. is a father. After Jewish survivors viewing a photo spread identified Demjanjuk as serving at Treblinka near the gas chambers, however, US government officials instead pursued the Treblinka charges. [121] As the Government noted, a motion to reopen, such as Demjanjuk's, could only properly be filed with the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) in Washington, D.C., and not an immigration trial court. Since the earlier witnesses were now deceased, the Munich court accepted that survivor testimony be read into the proceeding to facilitate findings of mass murder and determine the identity and citizenship of many of the victims. The defense argued that Demjanjuk had never been a guard, but that if he had been that he had had no choice in the matter. Demjanjuk admitted the scar under his armpit was an SS blood group tattoo, which he removed after the war, as did many SS men to avoid summary execution by the Soviets. [111] On 30 January 2008, the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit denied Demjanjuk's request for review. (The nearby Sobibor extermination camp was named after the village. Brigit Katz is a freelance writer based in Toronto. Shortly before his death, he was tried and convicted in Germany as an accessory to 28,060 murders at Sobibor. [58] The appeals court found probable cause that Demjanjuk "committed murders of uncounted numbers of prisoners" and allowed the extradition to take place. [19], Demjanjuk would later claim to have been drafted into the Russian Liberation Army in 1944. Based on eyewitness testimony by Holocaust survivors in Israel, he was identified as the notorious Treblinka extermination camp guard known as "Ivan the Terrible. But OSI's new director Allan Ryan chose to go ahead with the prosecution of Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible. Demjanjuk became a US citizen in 1958. The issuance of the stay by the immigration trial court was therefore improper, as that court had no jurisdiction over the matter. [157] Prior to Demjanjuk's trial, the requirement that prosecutors find a specific act of murder to charge guards with had resulted in a very low conviction rate for death camp guards. Danilchenko was a former guard at Sobibor and had been deposed by the Soviet Union in 1979 at the request of the OSI (US Office of Special Investigations). John Demjanjuk's family raises concerns over Netflix documentary It is Ivan from Treblinka, from the gas chambers, the man I am looking at now." Explore a timeline of events that occurred before, during, and after the Holocaust. 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. [140] Demjanjuk arrived in the courtroom in a wheelchair pushed by a German police officer. Why are we so obsessed with John Demjanjuk? - The Forward [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. However, his family has concerns over how his story is portrayed,they spoke with 3news. Demjanjuk was only the second person to be tried for these charges in Israel. 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). Getty He settled in Seven Hills, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, and worked for many years in a Ford auto plant. He was assigned to a manorial estate called Okzow on 22 September 1942, but returned to Trawniki on 14 October. [56] Writer Lawrence Douglas has called the case "the most highly publicized denaturalization proceeding in American history. [51], Demjanjuk's defense was supported by the Ukrainian community and various Eastern European migr groups; Demjanjuk's supporters alleged that he was the victim of a communist conspiracy and raised over two million dollars for his defense. Demjanjuk's lawyer argued that all of the ID cards could be forgeries and that there was no point comparing them. On 18 August 1993, the court rejected the petitions on the grounds that, During the trial, the prosecution argued that Demjanjuk should be tried for crimes at Sobibor; however, Justice Aharon Barak was not convinced, stating, "We know nothing about him at Sobibor". [11] Having died before a final judgment on his appeal could be issued, under German law, Demjanjuk remains technically innocent. This removed any obstacles to federal agents seizing him for deportation to Germany. As a result, in 2002 Demjanjuk again lost his American citizenship, this time for good. On 13 July 2009, prosecutors charged him with 27,900counts of accessory to murder for his time as a guard at Sobibor. On May 19, 2008, the US Supreme Court declined to review his appeal. [104], On 20 February 1998, Judge Paul Matia of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio vacated Demjanjuk's denaturalization "without prejudice," meaning that OSI could seek to strip Demjanjuk of citizenship a second time. [78] During the trial, Demjanjuk was again identified on the photo spread by Otto Horn, a former German SS guard at Treblinka. John Demjanjuk was removed from the United States to Germany in May 2009. Prior to the Sobibor Perpetrator Collections unveiling, experts had never found any photographic evidence placing Demjanjuk at Sobibor, creating a gap in knowledge that accounts for the newly released images significance. A better question likely is will it ever be put to rest? [74] Asked by the prosecution if he recognized Demjanjuk, Rosenberg asked that the defendant remove his glasses "so I can see his eyes." . [75] The testimony of one of these witnesses, Pinhas Epstein, had been barred as unreliable in US denaturalization trial of former camp guard Feodor Fedorenko,[74] while another, Gustav Boraks, sometimes appeared confused on the stand. [41] After returning to Trawniki in August 1943, Marchenko transferred to Trieste, Italy, and disappeared towards the end of the war. What Does John Demjanjuk's Family Think Of 'Devil Next Door - Bustle [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. John Demjanjuk nailed the dark wood paneling in the family basement, glued down the linoleum and even built a second kitchen for his wife, Vera, to cook in during the hot summer months. But two newly released photographs may prove otherwise. Shame on you! Moreover, after Demjanjuk's extradition to Israel, investigators at the OSI, while reviewing original personnel and administrative records from Flossenbrg, found references to Demjanjuk's name linked to his Trawniki military identification number (1393), thus independently corroborating Danil'chenko's testimony that Demjanjuk served at Flossenbrg. Demjanjuk immigrated to the United States in 1952 and became a naturalized US citizen in 1958. [79] Most significantly, Sheftel called Dr. Julius Grant, who had proven that the Hitler diaries were forged. [114][115] On 10 November 2008, German federal prosecutor Kurt Schrimm directed prosecutors to file in Munich for extradition, since Demjanjuk once lived there. [30] 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. 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. Newly released picture may prove John Demjanjuk, who lived in Seven Hills, was a Nazi death camp guard, US Marshals find 14-year-old Cleveland girl missing since July in Columbus with 41-year-old man, 3 men shot at Hookah Lounge in Summit County, US Marshals: 31-year-old Cleveland man wanted for raping child over 2-year span, Netflix has docu-series on John Demjanjuk, the accused Nazi guard who lived in Northeast Ohio, Closed Captioning/Audio Description Problems. Nevertheless, blood-type tattooing was never consistently implemented. He was deported to Germany, where prosecutors presented various pieces of evidence suggesting Demjanjuk was one of the Trawniki MenSoviet prisoners of war who were recruited by the Nazis to work as guards at the Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka killing centers. [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. [161] On 31 March 2012, it was reported that John Demjanjuk was buried at an undisclosed US location. There he became a United Auto Workers (UAW) diesel engine mechanic at the nearby Ford automobile factory,[30] where a friend from Regensburg had found work. [159] As a consequence of his appeal not having been heard, Demjanjuk is still presumed innocent under German law. Such a proceeding became possible upon the discovery of internal Trawniki training camp personnel correspondence in the Archives of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation in Moscow. "[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. Demjanjuk worked as a mechanic at Fords plant in Cleveland. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, including NYmag.com, Flavorwire and Tina Brown Media's Women in the World. He was then brought to a German prisoner of war camp in Chem in July 1942. In November 2009, he again sat in the defendant's dock. [95] One described Ivan the Terrible as having brown hair, hazel eyes and a large scar down to his neck; Demjanjuk was blond with grayish-blue eyes and no such scar. His fate remains unknown. [157][158] His release pending appeal was protested by some, including Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. meaning "Terrible" in Polish and Russian. John Demjanjuk's Wife, Vera Demjanjuk: 5 Fast Facts | Heavy.com His. 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. John Demjanjuk in 2010. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says that it is possible that Ivan Demjanjuk aka John Demjanjuk, believed to be "Ivan the Terrible" of Treblenka, may be the man in the middle of the first row, (photo credit: US HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM). There is no evidence that POWs trained as police auxiliaries at Trawniki were required to receive such tattoos, although it was an option for those that volunteered. Newly released picture may prove John Demjanjuk, who lived in Seven Upon receiving these files, and after years of litigation, Demjanjuk's American defense team filed a suit against the US government to set aside the judgment stripping him of his citizenship, and accused the OSI of prosecutorial misconduct. Ivan the Terrible John Demjanjuk True Story - The Trial of the "[9][pageneeded] After the conviction, Demjanjuk was released pending appeal. [80] He also called Dutch psychologist Willem Albert Wagenaar, who testified to flaws in the method by which Treblinka survivors had identified Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible. [127] On Thursday 7 May 2009, the United States Supreme Court, via Justice John Paul Stevens, declined to consider Demjanjuk's case for review, thereby denying Demjanjuk any further stay of deportation. Because his appeal was still pending when he died, he is now legally presumed innocent. "[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. [131], On 3 July 2009, prosecutors deemed Demjanjuk fit to stand trial. [129] The German Administrative Court rejected Demjanjuk's claim on 6 May. Previously, historians knew of only two photos taken at Sobibor while it was still operational; the camp was dismantled after a prisoner revolt in 1943. Shame on you! Grant testified that the document had been forged. [64] Despite initially attracting little attention, once survivor testimony began the trial became a "national obsession" and was followed widely throughout Israel. A critical piece of evidence was John Demjanjuk's Trawniki camp identification card, located in a Soviet archive. In August 1977, Demjanjuk was accused of having been a Trawniki man. "[5] Although the judges agreed that there was sufficient evidence to show that Demjanjuk had served at Sobibor, Israel declined to prosecute. Originally Vera Bulochnik, she and John met in a German camp for displaced persons, The New York Times reported. Powered by. Their video showed him walking unaided to an appointment. GettyPicture taken on May 11, 2009 shows police and media waiting in front of the home of John Demjanjuk before he was carried out on a stretcher in Seven Hills, Ohio. No wartime documentary evidence that definitively placed Demjanjuk at Treblinka has ever surfaced. His first child was due in late October, just when this magazine will hit the newstands. In July 2009, German prosecutors indicted Demjanjuk on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder at Sobibor. Family of John Demjanjuk reacts to Netflix documentary He was. Cookie Policy "[47] Additionally, OSI submitted the testimony of former SS guard Horn identifying Demjanjuk as having been at Treblinka. Demjanjuk also said, "Your Honors, if I had really been in that terrible place, would I have been stupid enough to say so? But an investigation conducted in the 1990s by the US Office of Special Investigations found this to be a cover story. [88] Demjanjuk said he just wrote a common Ukrainian surname after he forgot his mother's real name (Tabachyk). View the list of all donors. [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. Copyright 2020 WOIO. [39] In 1979, three guards from Sobibor gave sworn depositions that they knew Demjanjuk to have been a guard there, and two identified his photograph. [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. After a federal appeals court upheld this decision, OSI filed a deportation proceeding in December 2004. When will the Demjanjuk case be put to rest? Evidence to assist this claim included an identification card from Trawniki bearing Demjanjuk's picture and personal information[88] found in the Soviet archives in addition to German documents that mentioned "Wachmann" Demjanjuk with his date and place of birth.