On this day in 1986, the trial of former Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk (the guard in the middle of the front row) started in Jerusalem. He would eventually be acquitted of the initial charges, but was in 2011 held guilty for assissting in the murder of 27,900 Jews and sentenced to 5 years in prison
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[Context](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk#Trial_in_Israel)
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John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; Ukrainian: Іван Миколайович Дем’янюк; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, Majdanek, and Flossenbürg. Demjanjuk became the center of global media attention in the 1980s, when he was tried and convicted after being misidentified as “Ivan the Terrible”, a notoriously cruel watchman at Treblinka extermination camp. Shortly before his death, he was again tried and convicted as an accessory to 28,000 murders at Sobibor.
Born in 1920 in Soviet Ukraine, Demjanjuk was conscripted into the Soviet Red Army in 1940. He fought in World War II and was taken prisoner by the Germans in spring 1942. He was recruited by the Germans and trained at Trawniki concentration camp, going on to serve at Sobibor extermination camp and at least two concentration camps. 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. They settled in Seven Hills, Ohio, where he worked in an auto factory and raised three children. Demjanjuk became a US citizen in 1958.
In August 1977, Demjanjuk was accused of having been a Trawniki man. Based on eyewitness testimony by Holocaust survivors in Israel, he was identified as the notorious Treblinka extermination camp guard known as “Ivan the Terrible”. Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel in 1986 for trial. In 1988, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death. He maintained his innocence, claiming that it was a case of mistaken identity. In 1993 the verdict was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court, based on new evidence that cast reasonable doubt over his identity as “Ivan the Terrible”. Although the judges agreed that there was sufficient evidence to show that Demjanjuk had served at Sobibor, Israel declined to prosecute. In September 1993 Demjanjuk was allowed to return to Ohio. In 1999, US prosecutors again sought to deport Demjanjuk for having been a concentration camp guard, and his citizenship was revoked in 2002. In 2009, Germany requested his extradition for over 27,900 counts of acting as an accessory to murder: one for each person killed at Sobibor during the time when he was alleged to have served there as a guard. He was deported from the US to Germany in that same year. On 12 May 2011, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.
According to legal scholar Lawrence Douglas, in spite of serious missteps along the way, the German verdict brought the case “to a worthy and just conclusion”. After the conviction, Demjanjuk was released pending appeal. He lived at a German nursing home in Bad Feilnbach, where he died on 17 March 2012.
I’ve watched the Netflix doc and this case was fishy as hell. Eliyahu Rosenberg, a holocaust survivor identified him as “Ivan the Terrible” from Sobibor had stated in 1947 that the guard died during a prisonners’ uprising. The description of Ivan the terrible didn’t fit Demjanuk’s. Ivan Marchenko was later identified as Ivan the Terrible. So based on this false testimony Demjanjuk was declared not guilty. He was then trialed in Germany, sentenced to 5 years of prison but appealed. As he died before his tried and he’s still considered innocent.
I personnaly tend to think that he was soviet Pow turned into a volonturee Nazi . During his trial he was asked about his scard on the right armpit and admitted that it was a blood tatoo, so most lilely he was an SS. I’m still baffled by the reason why Rosenberg contradicted his previous statement. Maybe he recognized him a one of Sobinor’s guard and wanted to make him convict despite knowing that Demjanjuk wasn’t Ivan the Terrible.