This chap was long thought to be a murderous Nazi prison guard in the Treblinka prison camp. Apparently, after many years of defending his innocence, it seemed to be that he was telling the truth after all these years, that he was indeed not Ivan the Terrible.
However, subsequent investigations indicated that even though he might not have been Ivan the Terrible, he probably was Ivan the Pretty Bad. That is, apparently he had been a prison guard, just not the one they thought he was.
(I believe that information is correct. If not, feel free to correct.)
Now, the questions:
Demjanjuk was Ukrainian, presumably an enemy of the Nazis. How did he end up as prison guard for the other side?
What was the fate of Ivan Marchenko, the man believed to have been the real Ivan the Terrible?
Demjanjuk is to have his American citizenship revoked (unless that has already happened) because of his “duties” in the prison camps. What is the law on this?
His American citizenship was already revoked by the federal district court in Cleveland which ruled that he was not eligible for citizenship under the Displaced Persons Act, under which he was naturalized. I’m guessing that act does not allow Nazi war criminals to emigrate. The case that was in the news today was that the circuit court had upheld the ruling.
Indeed, the Displaced Persons Act specifically prohibited those who had participated in persecution during WWII from gaining U.S. permanent residence. That which has been based on fraud (lying about one’s wartime activities) can be taken away by the court system, with no statute of limitations.
Lots of Soviet citizens, some of them Ukrainians, served as concentration camp guards during the Nazi occupation of parts of the Soviet Union. Some did it because they thought it would keep them safe from the Nazis, some did it because they weren’t exactly pro-Soviet to begin with, and well, Ukraine has historically not been the friendliest place for Jews to live. (Just ask my ex-boyfriend’s father, whose mother was shot to death in front of his eyes by a concentration camp guard in Ukraine.)
I haven’t read the ruling on Demjanjuk yet, but even if it’s been discovered that he wasn’t Ivan the Terrible, he may still have lied about his activities during the war to qualify to enter the U.S. under the Displaced Persons Act, which would mean that he still immigrated to the U.S. through fraud. Anyone with links handy, please provide.
Demjanjuk…man, that name brings back some memories. It must have been 25 years ago when they first nailed him back in Cleveland. I remember watching on the local news - “Cleveland Autoworker Accused of Being Nazi Camp Guard”
My dad worked with a guy, who knew a guy, who was in charge of Demjanjuk at the jail when they first arrested him. He said Demjanjuk copped to the whole thing. I know this is the kind of solid inside information that makes your $5 a year such a bargain. Why would he confess to a jailer? And why didn’t the confession ever make it into court? We can only speculate that the jailer was full of crap.
Wikipedia reminds us that Demjanjuk was not convicted of being Ivan in Isreal & his conviction was overtruned in the U.S.:
John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker in Cleveland, Ohio, was accused of being the legendary “Ivan the Terrible” in the Treblinka concentration camp. He was convicted of war crimes, in 1986. In 1993, the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Demjanjuk was a victim of prosecutorial misconduct (as federal prosecutors had deliberately withheld evidence) and his sentence was overturned. In the meantime, Demjanjuk had been stripped of his citizenship and been extradited to Israel; from which he returned following an acquittal decision by the Supreme Court of Israel on July 29, 1993.
re Ukranianians – for some perspective (& despite the Cite there *were * “bad” Ukranians):
During World War II, Ukraine and Ukrainians were savaged by the Germans. Approximately 6 million Ukrainians were killed. Of this 6 million, 3 million were non-Jewish Ukrainian civilians and 900,000 were Ukrainian Jews.
Another 2.4 million Ukrainian men and women were pirated away by the Germans for slave labor in Germany. More than 2 million Ukrainians died in combat against the Germans or died in German captivity as Soviet prisoners of war.
More background on the Demjanjuk case, denaturalization, and the DOJ’s Office of Special Investigations, which prosecutes suspected Nazi war criminals. I saw evidence in a few cases like this when I worked in Immigration Court, but never saw a case go to trial; much to my disappointment, the suspects usually agreed to leave the U.S. permanently without a further hearing (of course, by then they’d already been denaturalized in District Court, so the evidence was pretty overwhelming):
Many Soviet subjects, particularly non-Russians, who were looked-down upon by Russians, chose to fight and work for the Germans against Stalin’s communists.
Many Russian Cossacks fought and died with the Germans in the Stalingrad debacle.
Yes, they did, but the accusations against Demjanjuk are more than that. While jimmmy is correct that there was a lot of brutality against the Ukrainians by the Nazis, there was also a lot of pro-Nazi sentiment in the Ukraine, especially when the Nazis first invaded (in large part, due to anti-Soviet feeling), and a lot of Ukrainian fascists and German collaborators, and in fact, there were auxiliary Ukrainian army and SS units. The accusations against Demjanjuk is that he was a member of the Ukrainian SS and a concentration camp guard.
The capos weren’t guards. They still had been deported themselves (generally criminals or political prisonners, AFAIK), hence i’m not sure anybody has ever been tried/sentenced for having been a capo.
As a slight threadjack, I was… Is ‘honored’ the right word? To sit in on one day of Demjanjuk’s trial. It was odd hearing both him and the lawyers talk about the camps. Almost surreal. The only thing that I really took away from it was that Demjanjuk looked very lost, and seemed to be quite evasive when it came to answering questions about his duties.
I was going to let this go, but I feel I should say something since it was bumped.
Eva, I am not sure if “That wasn’t really the point” was a shot or not. I thought it was much was to the point offering context to the OP Question: how did Dumb-ass end up on the other side. Captain Amazing, I respect and usually love your stuff and this was typically balanced. However, putting Ukrainians in the SS without explanation - & as a cite on their sympathies - is unfair and misleading:
The Nazi’s recruited many of these people out of POW camps and forced some marginal people into the SS and into gaurd positions
I think this same site offers a better more complete explanatory statement that is more SDMBGQ than “Ukrainians anti-Semitism or ant-soviet feelings made them eager and willing to help the Nazis” which is the general Western view :
*We have carefully read your e-mail concerning our statements about the participation of a portion of the Ukrainian population in aiding the nazis in the perpetration of the Holocaust. While we agree that not all Ukrainians cooperated with the Holocaust or were voluntary enlistees in the SS, our research shows that a significant portion of the Ukrainian population voluntarily cooperated with the invaders of their country and voluntarily assisted in the Holocaust. As such, the statement to which you object is an accurate answer even though it does not recognize (as it should) the many Ukrainians who resisted the Nazi invasion. *
I think the Bottom-line on Ukrainians and the holocaust (YMMV): 100,000 is the top limit of Ukrainians (not all of whom were willing volunteers) who actively served the Nazi’s (I have to use my own site but I have seen the number lower).
2.4 million Ukrainian men and women were taken by the Germans for slave labor in Germany.
2 million plus Ukrainians died in combat against the Germans or died in German captivity
3 Million Ukrainian civilians were killed
These are important contextual numbers to keep in mind next time a discussion about Ukrainians helping the Nazis starts
To be clear: 900,000 Ukrainian Jews died – “Ukrainians” were complicit in that. Willing compliance by Ukrainian guards in Poland was a big enabler at Treblinka, Sobibor and elsewhere. Providing more of a context to the usual sweeping generalizations about Ukrainian complicity in all this is not a way to excuse or diminish the horrible fact that some Ukrainians were guilty.
It wasn’t at all meant as a swipe. I just meant that even though I certainly acknowledge that much larger absolute numbers of ethnic Ukrainians than Jews died in WWII in Ukraine, I don’t see that you’ve developed an argument as to what that fact might have to do with Demjanjuk’s motivations for becoming a concentration camp guard and aiding in the persecution of Jews. Fighting on the German side, perhaps, but not specifically serving as a concentration camp guard. And I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that Demjanjuk was a POW or forced laborer at any point, or that he joined the Ukrainian SS against his will.
I’m not going to make generalizations about the level of anti-Semitism among Ukrainians; I’ll leave that to my ex’s father. But I don’t think anyone here is arguing that there was (and is) no anti-Semitism among ethnic Ukrainians, or even that anti-Semitism was a motivating factor for some Soviets who became concentration camp guards, not only in Ukraine, but in the Baltics as well (there was also a high-profile denaturalization case of a Lithuanian, whose name is slipping my mind at the moment).
It wasn’t my intention to be either unfair or misleading, or to dismiss or diminish the suffering that the Ukrainians, or any of the conquered nations of Europe faced under the Nazis. Ithe Ukrainians especially were in a terrible position, stuck between the evil of the Nazi regime, which considered them an inferior race worthy only of slavery and death, and the Stalinist Soviet Union, which had enslaved them, and had perpetuated a famine which effectively amounted to a genocide against the Ukrainians. It also wasn’t my intention to ignore the many Ukrainians who risked, and many times gave their lives, resisting the Nazis.
For what its worth, I find nothing to disagree with Mr. Edeiken. Again, I hope I’ve made myself clearer.
One point I’d like to add and I apologies if it was covered in any of the above sites, the dilemma faced by all soviet citizens pressed into service by the Germans. At the close of the war the agreements between the allies called for the repatriation of all displaced nationals. This meant that people like Demjanjuk and people like my father, who was too young to be of use in any military capacity so was shipped to what became East Germany to work on a farm, would be returned to the USSR and almost certainly killed for collaboration. So they lied their way into the US and for the most part provided their families a life that was far better than the one they were born into.
I don’t know how bad an “Ivan” Demjanjuk was but if the only bases for kicking him out of the US (and depriving him of the UAW pension he worked years to earn) is that he lied on his immigration form, there are tens of thousands of other immigrants Ukrainian and otherwise who are equally “guilty.”
Ennui, we aren’t talking about a simple white lie here. If you look at the first paragraph of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decision I linked above, you will see that the court judged that it was proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Demjanjuk had served as a guard at several camps.
This meant that he lied on his original application for admission to the U.S. as a displaced person, because he would not have been eligible if he’d revealed that he had served as a camp guard, because that meant that he had persecuted others. So he was not eligible for any other immigration benefit, such as U.S. citizenship, subsequently granted.
Please understand that we aren’t talking about ordinary military service here; we are talking about the persecution of other human beings based on their ethnicity and/or religion. And if you look at the last paragraph on p. 20, it reads “a defendant need not engage in “personal acts” of persecution in order to be held ineligible for a visa, because an individual’s service in a unit dedicated to exploiting and exterminating civilians on the basis of race or religion constitutes assistance in persecution within the meaning of the DPA [Displaced Persons Act].”
We aren’t talking about shooting at an opposing army in the heat of battle; we’re talking about assisting in the commission of genocide.
If any of my statements indicated that a “simple white lie” was the worst of Demjanjuk’s crimes I do apologize as I also do for not having read your site Eva Luna. Being the son of a Ukrainian immigrant and also living not too far from Demjanjuk I took an interest in this case but mainly through local news stories and reflections from my father and some of his friends so I should admit to sharing some of their bias.
There is no doubt Demjanjuk is guilty of some of what he have been accused of, he spent seven years in Israeli prisons during several trials, then when he was not conclusively found to have been “Ivan the Terrible” and since (I believe) he had already served a term similar to the sentence he would have received for being a death camp guard, Israel released him.
There can be no argument that had Demjanjuk not lied he would never have been granted a visa and he would have been returned to the Ukraine to be killed. But the same laws that would have barred his emigration were broken for people who’s culpability for atrocities far exceeded his, not only the Von Brauns but also hard core SS types like Gehlen and Augsburg. Granted Demjanjuk didn’t have anything to offer like those others did and the fact that our government broke the laws when it served them doesn’t excuse Demjunjuk from doing the same. But from all I’ve read of his life since coming to America he became a quiet and respected member of a quiet and respectable neighborhood. He served his time for whatever crimes he committed and after 27 years of defending himself he seems content to die quietly at home striped of his citizenship. I can only hope some compassionate prosecutor lets this happen.