Article in the paper today about John Demjanjuk. He was convicted of being a pretty evil Nazi death camp guard, had his US citizenship revoked, and sentenced to death in Israel in 1988. I remember all that happening back then, this guy was all over the media as a real heel. The article went on to say that he was freed five years later when evidence indicated he was a victim of mistaken identity. Well, I never heard about that.
Anyone know:
a) was this guy truly innocent, just a really bad case of justice gone awry, or
b) a Nazi soldier but not a death camp guard, or
c) a Nazi death camp guard, but not the vicious “Ivan the Terrible” that he’d been convicted of being.
I remember this guy being hated and sentenced to die by pretty much the world. You don’t typically get that far in the process without some wrong doing. Was this guy truly innocent?
He addmitted to being a Nazi camp guard, but claimed to have been stationed at another camp. At least that was what Pat Buchanon said.
IIRC, that is correct from other sources as well.
As one person put it "OK, he wasn’t the “Ivan the Terrible,” but he was at least an “Ivan the Not-So-Good.”
The government agency that is supposed to track down ex-Nazis put a bullseye on his forehead around twenty years ago. They trumped up the charges that he was Ivan the Terrible and got him extradited to Israel. When he was originally being tried in the early 1980’s, I was always surprised by the number of problems with the prosecution’s case and was amazed when he was convicted of that.
Now, I have never been persuaded by his claims of victimhood. I think he probably was drafted by the Nazis after the Russian invasion (he was Ukrainian) and may have been “told” to be a guard, but his actual story has been inconsistent and he did lie to get into the U.S.
However, the government basically lied to make their case, going out of their way to convict a man of capital charges who was clearly not who they claimed. (The appelate court that restored his citizenship really tore the feds a new one based on the amount of (near?) perjury they committed.) He has already spent more time in prison than anyone else accused of being a guard (barring any actual charges of torture or murder). And he has spent his entire retirement fighting cancer and the U.S. and Israeli governments.
Whether he deserves $5,000,000 in compensation is up to a jury. He certainly deserves a break.
Tom~