John Demjanjuk, Ohio Man Accused Of Being Nazi Guard, Avoids Deportation

CLEVELAND — John Demjanjuk, accused of being a Nazi death camp guard, marked his 89th birthday Friday by winning a reprieve of his ordered deportation to Germany to face possible trial.

An immigration judge in Arlington, Va., issued the stay of a deportation expected during the weekend, said his son, John Demjanjuk Jr.

Immigration Judge Wayne Iskra on Friday ordered that Demjanjuk's deportation be put on hold until the court can rule on his request to reopen the U.S. case that ordered his removal.

Authorities in Germany said Demjanjuk had been expected there by Monday.

Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker who lives in the Cleveland suburb of Seven Hills, kept out of sight Friday, as he has for years. He has argued that his deportation would amount to torture, given his frail health.

A German arrest warrant issued in March accuses the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk of 29,000 counts of acting as an accessory to murder at the Sobibor camp in occupied Poland during World War II.

In Germany, Demjanjuk would have a chance to respond to the allegations before a judge. He denies involvement in any deaths.

In a three-page signed statement, Demjanjuk asked earlier in the week for asylum in the U.S. and said deporting him "will expose me to severe physical and mental pain that clearly amount to torture under any reasonable definition of the term."

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"I am physically very weak and experience severe spinal, hip and leg pain, which limits mobility and causes me to require assistance to stand up and move about," the statement said. "Spending 8 to 12 hours in an airplane seat flying to Germany would be unbearably painful for me."

In the statement, Demjanjuk said he suffers from a bone marrow disorder, kidney disease, anemia, kidney stones, arthritis, gout and spinal deterioration.

His attorney, John Broadley, said a government physician examined Demjanjuk on Thursday to determine his ability to travel and there was "dramatic evidence" of his back pain. Broadley submitted a portion of the exam videotape to the government on Friday as part of his argument against deportation.

In his statement seeking asylum, Demjanjuk questioned Germany's motive in seeking his deportation and suggested the German government was trying to make up for lax earlier pursuit of war criminals.

"It is possible that the German authorities see a prosecution of me as means to draw attention away from their past approach," the statement said.

A German Justice Ministry spokeswoman, Eva Schmierer, declined to comment on Demjanjuk's statement.

Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said in interview that the family was relieved.

"There's a sense of relief that we don't have to deal with the trauma for him and for our family and for the many, many people that have been sympathetic to his cause for many years, believing in his innocence and believing that he was a victim of the war as much as anyone else was but he's still in pain. He's still ill," he said.

Demjanjuk Jr. said sending his ailing father to Germany would have led to a medical emergency.

"He would wind up in a German hospital. I don't believe they would ever put him on trial," he said.

Demjanjuk Jr. said there was no merit to the German allegations. "They are taking the old case and applying it to new allegations. There isn't evidence of one single murder, let alone my father being involved in 29,000," he said.

A court-appointed defense lawyer in Germany, Guenther Maull, said he would seek an examination of whether Demjanjuk is fit to be held in custody and stand trial. He said he does not expect a trial to begin before this summer.

Maull said there were 120 guards at Sobibor and it was unclear which of them did what. As a result, he argued, it is unclear whether formal charges would be brought to court.

Demjanjuk came to the United States after the war as a displaced person and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. His citizenship was revoked twice, first in 1981.

Demjanjuk was extradited in 1986 to Israel, where he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death in 1988. In 1993, the Israeli Supreme Court determined he was not the notorious Nazi death camp guard Ivan the Terrible at Treblinka in Poland, and he was allowed to return home.

Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship was restored in 1998 and revoked again in 2002. The U.S. Department of Justice renewed its case, saying he had indeed been a Nazi guard and could be deported for falsifying information on his U.S. immigration paperwork.

Comments

[Carly307]

He was first accused of being Ivan the Terrible, however, it was stated by guards that Ivan the Terrible's surname was actually Marchenko, not Demjanjuk. If he was a guard at the other camps, who knows what his involvement was. A lot of people joined the Nazi party to avoid their own execution or their families, right or wrong! If you didn't follow the Nazi party, you were considered a traitor and killed. I GUARANTEE if the guards pulled out one of the Jewish people in the camps and said to them, "If you kill this perfect stranger standing next to you, I will set you and your family free and if you don't, I will kill you and your family", that person would do it in a heartbeat. I know there were sadistic murders involved in the Nazi party but I can't sit here and say that a young, highly influential, probably scared kid in his early 20s was this sadistic murderer and deserves what he is getting today. Many, people were brainwashed into thinking that Jews were the enemy. If you're told the sky is green enough, eventually you believe it. Let's face it, in Germany it was kill or be killed. Again it doesn't make it right but that's how it was back then. That may sound like a terrible thing but if you sit and think about that, I'm sure a lot of people would agree with me.

[jnutlfam2]

So where are those who say the Holocaust never happened? Those who really knew kept quiet until they were 89 years old.

[BBallTLone7]

Kind of interesting the Justice Dept is so intent on this witch hunt but yet allowed another guard who admitted to brutalizing & torturning Jews stay in the US based on age & failing health! Is it because that guard was Jewish? A small portion of the article is pasted below, you can google Tannenabaum for more info - I don't have enough information about Demjanjuk's health to have a vote either way on this subject but after reading about this ONE guard (not counting many more) I have to believe this is a double standard and directly spits in the face of the "never forget and never forgive" mantra that is preached - you can make up your own minds after reading below.
__________­__________­__________­__________­_______

A Jew Who Beat Jews in a Nazi Camp Is Stripped of His Citizenship
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: Friday, February 5, 1988


A Polish-born Jew accused of wartime atrocities surrendered his United States citizenship before a Federal judge in Brooklyn yesterday and admitted that he brutalized Jewish prisoners in a Nazi forced-labor camp and later entered this country illegally.

But under an agreement with the Justice Department, the 77-year-old Brooklyn resident, Jacob Tannenbaum, will not be deported - an action the Government had sought for a year - because doctors for both sides agreed that his age and failing health would make it life-threatening.

[sammyscout]

We've done so much wrong in the last administration, lets continue by shielding this cold hearted...

[JeanPaulSatire]

Interesting that a judge can consider that deporting Demjanjuk and his spending time on a plane would amount to "torture" as Demjanjuk is claiming.

If that argument ends up being accepted by the court, then that would make those involved in having prisoners remain in "stress positions" for prolonged periods of time guilty of torture.

[snakesonablog]

(Pt II) - Demjanjuk was then allowed to return to the US. He is now alleged to be a camp guard at Sobibor. He has again denied this. We don't know what the facts are. it is rather convenient that Germany has an interest in prosecuting war criminals who were FORCED by the Germans to act as guards. Putting aside the morality of a POW choosing this role rather than the gas chamber, Germany has allowed the statute of limitations to expire on prosecuting its own citizens in similar circumstances (though those individuals would have actually chosen their roles). This is altogether too convenient. If Demjanjuk is to be prosecuted anywhere, it should be in Ukraine, where he was a Red Army soldier, or Poland, where he is alleged to have committed war crimes. Meanwhile, thousands of others, even from WWII escape, with nary a view of prosecution. In much of Ukraine, for example, Jewish council members worked with the German occupiers. They decided which Jewish members would be put in concentration camps, and which would live to see another day. Nobody has ever called for their prosecution. Germans who took slave laborers from occupied countries, who raped women and beat men, were and are respectable citizens who do not have to face anyone. And of course, this is alright with some idiot posters here who throw around charges of anti Semitism against anyone who does not agree with the simplistic, and factually erroneous views, they have expressed.

[snakesonablog]

Let's be clear about the facts in this case. Assuming Demjanjuk was, in fact, a camp guard, he did not "sign up" for that position. He was a Red Army POW. In the early days of WWII, over half a million POW's were starved to death by the Germans in Ukraine. The survivors were then taken on a march, during which tens of thousands more died of sickness and starvation. The survivors were put to work as slave labor in concentration camps. Those who became ill were gassed. In fact, Soviet POW's were among the very first victims of gas chambers. It was in that context that some POW's became camp guards. Some POW's refused this job, and paid with their lives. Others did not.

In the 1980's, Demjanjuk was wrongly convicted of being a sadistic guard at Treblinka known as "Ivan the Terrible". After the collapse of the USSR, evidence became available that proved, unequivocally, that Demjanjuk was not "Ivan the Terrible". The name of the real Ivan was Feodor Federenko, who was never in the Red Army, and who came from a different region of Ukraine. Federenko's fate is unknown.

[bennofs]

If only we would go after the Bush dynasty with the same ferocity as the Germans, for their involvement in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of foreign, domestic and military lives through their tenure of worldwide terror.

[sammyscout]

kudos, great comment, 100% agree

now we read about Hersh and Chainys independent hit squad...

http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2009/03/audio-seymour-hersh-cheney-left-stay.html

http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring

[wwoody]

I can't see the justice here, the man is 89 years old. He is about to met his maker, on God terms.

[rustbeltdemocrat]

Let him go. Some of you people amaze me. I am from Cleveland and have been following this story. The evidence is flimsy at best. There is reasonable doubt. Israel overturned their conviction on the guy. He is a Ukrainian POW. These camps killed more than Jews, they also killed SLAVS! Meaning Ukrainian, Poles, Russians. So let's just theoretically say he was a guard at this camp...that means he was killing his fellow countrymen. He was following orders so he wouldn't be shot dead in the camp. Last I checked POW's don't really have that big of a say.

[nomoredead]

I would hope that the younger generation of descendants from those terrible times would chose to forget and move on after 60 years of hate, anger and revenge seeking instead of constantly opening a wound that should heal. I am a descendant of American Indians and I do not think of the slaughter to near extinction they endured nor do I want to be reminded of their plight with constant movies or TV documentaries.

[ihateliars]

So I gather that you have no interest in the compensation being sought for the multiple treaty violations by our government, way back when?

[nomoredead]

No, I can take care of myself.

[SelenicMagick]

With the exception of the return of the Paha Sapa (Black Hills) and compensation for what was illegally taken from the Paha Sapa there is no true "Compensation" being sought... what is being sought is that the United States be forced to abide by the terms OF the treaties and give up this ridiculous notion that the government has what is called a "Plenary relationship" with the Indians when no such relationship exists.

[myturnnow]

He is so old now. I say to let him go. He will have to live with himself and his own guilt if he has any. It will not serve anyone to spend thousands of dollars trying to prove his innocence or guilt. He will meet his maker and there the judgement will be meted out.

[ihateliars]

Oh, by all means- if it was your family who was slaughtered, would you feel the same? The US, by analogy, has no statute of limitations on murder. This guy has played the system for decades, and very few mention his fraud in his application for immigration. As to "mercy", one generally has to admit one's guilt and ask for forgiveness before it is considered- this guy has not, and never will; he's going to do a Ken Lay and croak before there is justice for his victims. If he is innocent, then you'd think he would want his name cleared.

[snakesonablog]

That type of "fraud" on immigration applications was common among former Soviet citizens. They all stated they were Polish citizens. To state you were Soviet meant you would be repatriated to the USSR, due to the terms of the treaty negotiated at Yalta.

[carlgt1]

if you have to exact revenge on an extremely old, infirm, disgraced guy then you're about as compassionate as a prison camp guard!

[gatogato]

So what was your post to nomoredead? Some should forgive and forget and while others should press on the fight? Is it dependent on what "tribe" you belong to?
You seem to think justice is not "one size fits all"

[Carly307]

Of course he lied! No one knows what he did when he was a guard at these camps. No one knows the circumstances. Anyone ever watch The Changeling? If you have, think of it this way, there was a man and his mother who kidnapped, tortured and killed little boys on their chicken farm. There was another teenage boy who was this crazy mans cousin who was forced to participate in the torture and murder of these little boys until he escaped one day and told the police. This teenage boy had actually picked up an axe and killed another boy after given orders from his psychotic uncle to do so. He was TERRIFIED to disobey. No one is angry with this kid and he wasn't convicted of these murders. Who's to say that Demjajuk wasn't in a similar situation?

[Bluesplayer]

As a Cleveland resident, I've been following this man's story for decades now, but I still can't say for certain who or where he was during WW2. The evidence seems to say that he was an SS guard, but when it comes up against the burden of reasonable doubt, it falls slightly short...

As the Israeli Court said, ""The matter is closed-but not complete, the complete truth is not the prerogative of the human judge."

Either he was a vicious SS death camp guard who avoided life-long imprisonment, or he was a relative innocent caught up in a 30-year persecution, Neither of these possibilities is satisfying to civilized society, but at the very least, the memories of those who perished in the camps have been honored by both the attempts at justice and the restraint of vengeance.

[br0nxl1ng]

Very well-said.

[seted]

For God's sake, leave the old man alone. At this point the only thing they can do to him is strut him around for political points and hang him. After 60 years the argument is moot.

[Peter007]

I'm always skeptical of people being accused of crimes committed decades ago. During war times both sides commit crimes. The winner of the war prosecutes the losers. The crimes are political crimes. Secretary of defense McNamara admitted the US committed war crimes during WW2. and Vietnam. We weren't prosecuted because we didn't lose the wars.
This guy was a very young soldier over 60 years ago. The evidence against him is shaky at the least. This is a political crime.

[Babysnake]

At this point, given the history of the "process" presented here, I think further hounding of him is a crime.

[local21]

I'm curious to what war never produced war crimes. The two go hand in hand but Nazi death camps are in a league of their own.