Yesterday I stumbled across the 2019 five-part Netflix documentary on accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk, The Devil Next Door. Demjanjuk (pronounced dem-yan-yuk), a Ukrainian who immigrated to the U.S. after WW II, was extradited to Israel and then convicted by an Israeli court in 1988 of being Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka death camp, and was sentenced to death by hanging. But, in 1993, based on new evidence from Soviet archives, the Israeli supreme court, in a unanimous decision, overturned the conviction and declared Demjanjuk innocent, saying that the new evidence raised reasonable doubt about his guilt.
Demjanjuk then had his U.S. citizenship restored and he returned to Cleveland, Ohio, to live with his family.
However, 16 years later, in 2009, the DOJ's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) succeeded in getting Demjanjuk's citizenship revoked again and had him deported to Germany to stand trial. Years earlier, a U.S. court had found that OSI had withheld exculpatory evidence from Demjanjuk's lawyers during his first extradition hearing.
In 2011, a German court convicted Demjanjuk of being an accessory to murder because he allegedly served as a guard at the Sobibor death camp. The court abandoned the earlier claim that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible, since considerable evidence indicated that he could not have been that man, and since there was no documentary evidence that he was ever at Treblinka. Instead, the court concluded that he was automatically guilty of enabling murder because he served as a guard at Sobibor.
As many here know, I am about as pro-Israeli as you can get. Having been raised Jewish for part of my childhood and having a long-standing love for Israel and all things Israeli, I have no problem with the prosecution of genuine Nazi war criminals. But, I have serious doubts about the case against Demjanjuk.
The three "eyewitnesses" at his Israeli trial were not credible. One of them was clearly senile. One of them had repeatedly failed to identify Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible when first interviewed by police investigators but instead had identified another man who looked very different from Demjanjuk. And one of them was found to have claimed in 1947 that he personally took part in the killing of Ivan the Terrible during the uprising at Treblinka in August 1943 (a written account of his claim surfaced during the trial). Also, leaked OSI documents revealed that some OSI investigators doubted that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible, noting, among other things, marked differences in their descriptions and background (including a 5-inch height disparity).
If Demjanjuk had been a senior officer at Sobibor, I could see prosecuting him. But prosecuting someone because they served as a lowly guard is drastic overkill, unless there is credible evidence that they committed acts of cruelty. Even then, the acts would have to be fairly severe to warrant prosecution decades after the fact.
Yes, Demjanjuk almost certainly lied when he denied being a guard at Sobibor. It's not hard to understand why anyone would not want to admit they had been a guard at a death camp. But lying about having been a death-camp guard does not prove that the person committed war crimes.
When judging low-level participants in the Holocaust, I do think we need to consider the kinds of lives they lived after the war. By all accounts, Demjanjuk was a model citizen. He worked at the Ford plant in Cleveland and later retired from Ford with a pension. He was loved and respected by all who knew him, as far as anyone has been able to determine. His neighbors and fellow churchgoers who were asked about him universally, to every man and woman, said he was a kind and decent man, and that they could not believe he had committed war crimes. Every member of his family ardently stood by him during his two trials and have never wavered in declaring their belief in his innocence.
The Netflix documentary is fairly balanced. It fails to mention a few key facts that challenge OSI's claims, but overall it does a pretty good job of giving both sides of the story.
Demjanjuk then had his U.S. citizenship restored and he returned to Cleveland, Ohio, to live with his family.
However, 16 years later, in 2009, the DOJ's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) succeeded in getting Demjanjuk's citizenship revoked again and had him deported to Germany to stand trial. Years earlier, a U.S. court had found that OSI had withheld exculpatory evidence from Demjanjuk's lawyers during his first extradition hearing.
In 2011, a German court convicted Demjanjuk of being an accessory to murder because he allegedly served as a guard at the Sobibor death camp. The court abandoned the earlier claim that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible, since considerable evidence indicated that he could not have been that man, and since there was no documentary evidence that he was ever at Treblinka. Instead, the court concluded that he was automatically guilty of enabling murder because he served as a guard at Sobibor.
As many here know, I am about as pro-Israeli as you can get. Having been raised Jewish for part of my childhood and having a long-standing love for Israel and all things Israeli, I have no problem with the prosecution of genuine Nazi war criminals. But, I have serious doubts about the case against Demjanjuk.
The three "eyewitnesses" at his Israeli trial were not credible. One of them was clearly senile. One of them had repeatedly failed to identify Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible when first interviewed by police investigators but instead had identified another man who looked very different from Demjanjuk. And one of them was found to have claimed in 1947 that he personally took part in the killing of Ivan the Terrible during the uprising at Treblinka in August 1943 (a written account of his claim surfaced during the trial). Also, leaked OSI documents revealed that some OSI investigators doubted that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible, noting, among other things, marked differences in their descriptions and background (including a 5-inch height disparity).
If Demjanjuk had been a senior officer at Sobibor, I could see prosecuting him. But prosecuting someone because they served as a lowly guard is drastic overkill, unless there is credible evidence that they committed acts of cruelty. Even then, the acts would have to be fairly severe to warrant prosecution decades after the fact.
Yes, Demjanjuk almost certainly lied when he denied being a guard at Sobibor. It's not hard to understand why anyone would not want to admit they had been a guard at a death camp. But lying about having been a death-camp guard does not prove that the person committed war crimes.
When judging low-level participants in the Holocaust, I do think we need to consider the kinds of lives they lived after the war. By all accounts, Demjanjuk was a model citizen. He worked at the Ford plant in Cleveland and later retired from Ford with a pension. He was loved and respected by all who knew him, as far as anyone has been able to determine. His neighbors and fellow churchgoers who were asked about him universally, to every man and woman, said he was a kind and decent man, and that they could not believe he had committed war crimes. Every member of his family ardently stood by him during his two trials and have never wavered in declaring their belief in his innocence.
The Netflix documentary is fairly balanced. It fails to mention a few key facts that challenge OSI's claims, but overall it does a pretty good job of giving both sides of the story.
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