John Demjanjuk Put on Trial

 

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On this day, February 16th 1987, John Demjanjuk was put on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against humanity as performed as “Ivan the Terrible,” the notorious guard at Treblinka who operated the diesel engine used to murder Jews in the gas chamber.

Demjanjuk was born in Ukraine and fought for the Red Army during WWII.

After being taken prisoner by the Germans, he was sent to the Trawniki camp in Poland where he was trained to be a concentration camp guard for the Nazis. After the war, Demjanjuk immigrated to the United States, settling in Ohio with his wife and raising three children.

He was first accused in 1977 based on testimony of Holocaust survivors, but it would be nine years before he was extradited to Israel. There, he became only the second person, after Adolf Eichmann, to go on trial in Israel for crimes committed during the Holocaust. Like the Eichmann trial, the proceedings against Demjanjuk served to educate another generation about the Holocaust. Broadcasted on television, his trial captured the nation’s attention.

Despite claiming his innocence and being the victim of mistaken identity, Demjanjuk was found guilty in 1988 and sentenced to death. But his conviction was overturned on appeal as no records, including those long sealed in Soviet archives, could link him beyond a reasonable doubt to the Treblinka death camp. However, documents in those archives helped identify him as a guard at the Sobibor and Flossenburg concentration camps.

In 2009, after he had returned to the United States, Demjanjuk was sent to Germany for trial where he was charged with 28,060 counts of accessory to murder. The trial set a precedent by prosecuting an individual who served as a guard at a killing facility, arguing that despite not giving the orders or administering the lethal means, he shared responsibility for the crimes.

In May, 2011, Demjanjuk was convicted but released pending an appeal. Ten months later, Demjanjuk died in a German nursing home at the age of 91.