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A Question of Innocence
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19751 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1991 |
4,030 Words |
| Author
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Ken Myers
Ken Myers is a free-lance journalist from Cleveland, Ohio, who
specializes in legal affairs reporting. He writes a weekly
column for the National Law Journal and has covered the
Demjanjuk case extensively for more than seven years. |
If you are one of the countless people who have followed the John Demjanjuk case in a cursory fashion, glancing at a wire service story in the newspaper every few months, you are probably confused by the whole thing.
As a reporter who has covered the Demjanjuk case for years, I am frequently asked, "Whatever happened to Demjanjuk? Is he still on trial in Israel?"
The answer is yes and no. As of late December, Demjanjuk was awaiting a ruling from Israel's Supreme Court on his appeal of a guilty verdict and death sentence on war crimes charges. Demjanjuk is a retired autoworker from Cleveland, Ohio, who in 1977 was accused of being "Ivan the Terrible," a brutal Nazi guard from the Treblinka death camp in Poland during World War II.
Over the years, eight different Treblinka survivors have identified him as Ivan. In addition, an identification card from a Nazi training camp, with Demjanjuk's picture and personal information on it, was unearthed and used against him. He has consistently denied the charges, claiming the survivors' memories are faulty and that the ID card, known as the Trawniki card, was a KGB forgery.
In 1981, a U.S. judge in Cleveland stripped him of his naturalized citizenship, ruling that Demjanjuk had lied on immigration papers when he entered the country, covering up his wartime activities as a Nazi collaborator. In the process of his deportation to the Soviet Union (Demjanjuk was originally from the Ukraine), Israel requested his extradition so that he could stand trial there on war crimes charges.
The Israeli request took precedence, and in 1986, Demjanjuk was sent to Israel. In 1987, he stood trial, and in April 1988 he was found guilty and sentenced to death. The only other person Israel has tried for war crimes was Adolph Eichmann, one of the architects of Nazi extermination policies; he was convicted and put to death in 1962.
After Demjanjuk appealed the verdict and the sentence, a series of bizarre incidents--one defense lawyer jumping fifteen stories to his death, another lawyer getting acid thrown in his face by an irate Holocaust survivor at the funeral of the other lawyer--caused the appeal to be delayed for almost two years. At this writing, the appeal verdict is imminent. And in the meantime, a New York lawyer and journalist, Tom Teicholz, has written the first of what may be several books on the case,
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