DEMJANJUK, JOHN

(Ivan the Terrible)

(1920- )

   Demjanjuk entered the United States after World War II and became an auto worker in Cleveland, Ohio. He lost his U.S. citizenship in 1981 after the U.S. justice department built a case that he was "Ivan the Terrible," the gas chamber operator at the Nazi death camp of Treblinka, and in 1986, he was extradited to Israel. In 1988, he was found guilty and sentenced to death, but he appealed the verdict. On 29 July 1993, the Israeli Supreme Court nullified the death sentence and overturned his conviction of war crimes on grounds that new evidence from the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had created reasonable doubt that he was Ivan the Terrible. He was thus freed to leave Israel.

   In 1998, a Federal District Court judge ruled that Demjanjuk's U. S. citizenship could be restored. This ruling prompted the Justice Department to file a new civil complaint against Demjanjuk that focused on allegations that he served as a guard at the Sobibor and Ma-jdanek camps in Poland and at the Flossenburg camp in Germany. It additionally accused Demjanjuk of being a member of an SS-run unit that took part in capturing nearly two millions Jews in Poland. A court ruled that the Justice Department had proved its case against Demjanjuk and in December 2005 he was ordered deported to Ukraine. But, even if Demjanjuk loses all appeals, he would remain in the United States as a "stateless alien" if no country is willing to accept him.

   See also Holocaust (The Shoah).