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Justice Delayed but Not Denied
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19750 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1991 |
3,232 Words |
| Author
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Michael Wolf
Michael Wolf is an attorney in private practice in Washington,
D.C. From 1983 to 1987, he was the deputy director of the U.S.
Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which
was responsible for prosecuting the denaturalization,
deportation, and extradition proceedings against John
Demjanjuk. |
The Treblinka extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland was a sophisticated killing operation in which approximately one million Jews were gassed to death in little more than one year. The camp, which was closed in August 1943 after a revolt by Jewish prisoners, was run by a small number of German SS (Schutzstaffel) and by several dozen auxiliaries recruited from the ranks of captured Red Army soldiers. The later swore their allegiance to Hitler as a means of escaping the abominable condition in POW camps. After a period of training at Trawniki, another SS camp, these "volunteers," or "Hiwis," were given uniforms, guns, and standardized pay for their primary task: killing Jews.
At Treblinka, two of these Trawniki-trained Hiwis operated the gas chambers. The few surviving prisoners of Treblinka recall that one of the two was so brutal that he had garnered the nickname Ivan the Terrible. Approximately thirty-five years after Treblinka was closed, the U.S. government began investigating Cleveland autoworker John Demjanjuk, alleged to have been that same Ivan the Terrible. After a decade of investigation and litigation, John Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel. An Israeli court unanimously found him guilty of murder. However, controversy has dogged every step of Demjanjuk's many trials. Tom Teicholz's book provides the first comprehensive history of the legal proceedings against John Demjanjuk.
During five years of litigation in the United States, at least fourteen different judges reviewed the evidence against John Demjanjuk. In the course of ordering the denaturalization, deportation, and extradition from the United States, not a single judge voted in support of Demjanjuk. Three times Demjanjuk asked the Supreme Court to review his case, and three times it refused. When Demjanjuk asked Judge Robert Bork (then on the U.S. Court of Appeals) to stay his extradition to Israel, Bork refused. In Israel, the guilty verdict was reached by a unanimous three-judge panel. Not withstanding the unanimity of judicial results, Demjanjuk's conviction is destined to join a handful of other contentious capital cases (Bruno Hauptmann's and the Rosenbergs' come to mind) that persist in fascinating journalists and armchair sleuths.
Why is this so? To some extent, it is because the Demjanjuk case offers so many bizarre twists and turns that it mimics a Hollywood melodrama. One defense lawyer commits suicide on the eve of appeal, while a defense expert unsuccessfully attempts it. Surprise documents are released by the Soviet Union in the midst of trial--and are delivered to Israel by Armand Hammer. But these events are only side-shows to the
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