mark o'connor attorney who represented john demjanjuk

by Prof. Adeline White I 5 min read

Who was Demjanjuk's lawyer?

In his place, Demjanjuk hired Israeli trial lawyer Yoram Sheftel whom O'Connor had hired as co-counsel. Sheftel focused the defense largely on the claim that Demjanjuk's Trawniki card was a KGB forgery. Most significantly, Sheftel called Dr. Julius Grant, who had proven that the Hitler diaries were forged. Grant testified that the document had been forged. He also called Dutch psychologist Willem Albert Wagenaar, who testified to flaws in the method by which Treblinka survivors had identified Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible. Additionally, Sheftel alleged that the trial was a show trial, and referred to the trial as "the Demjanjuk affair," alluding to the famous antisemitic Dreyfus Affair.

Who was John Demjanjuk?

John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; Ukrainian: Іван Миколайович Дем'янюк; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, Majdanek, and Flossenbürg. Demjanjuk became the center of global media attention in the 1980s, ...

Why was Demjanjuk's citizenship revoked?

Demjanjuk's citizenship was revoked for having lied about his past in 1981, with the judge persuaded especially by the testimony of Otto Horn. Demjanjuk subsequently requested political asylum in the United States rather than deportation. His application for asylum was denied on 31 May 1984.

What happened to Demjanjuk?

Demjanjuk became the center of global media attention in the 1980s, when he was tried and convicted after being misidentified as " Ivan the Terrible ", a notoriously cruel watchman at Treblinka extermination camp. Shortly before his death, he was again tried and convicted as an accessory to 28,000 murders at Sobibor.

When was Demjanjuk sentenced to death?

In 1988 , Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death. He maintained his innocence, claiming that it was a case of mistaken identity. In 1993 the verdict was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court, based on new evidence that cast reasonable doubt over his identity as "Ivan the Terrible".

What happened to Ivan the Terrible?

On 18 April 1988, the Jerusalem District Court found Demjanjuk "unhesitatingly and with utter conviction" guilty of all charges and being Ivan the Terrible. One week later it sentenced him to death by hanging. Demjanjuk was placed in solitary confinement during the appeals process. While there, carpenters began building the gallows that would be used to hang him if his appeals were rejected, and Demjanjuk heard the construction from his cell.

Where did Demjanjuk live?

After the conviction, Demjanjuk was released pending appeal. He lived at a German nursing home in Bad Feilnbach, where he died on 17 March 2012. Having died before a final judgment on his appeal could be issued, under German law, Demjanjuk remains technically innocent.

Where did Demjanjuk die?

Demjanjuk died in a German nursing home in 2012 appealing separate war crimes charges in Munich, where he was accused of being an accessory in the death of nearly 30,000 Jewish prisoners, The New York Times reported.

Who is Elor Azaria?

In 2017, Sheftel represented Elor Azaria, the young Israeli soldier who fatally shot an unarmed Palestinian man as he laid helpless on the ground during a 2016 skirmish in the West Bank, the New York Times reported. That case, too, struck a nerve amongst Israelis — and horrified human rights groups across the globe.

Who is Yoram Sheftel?

Israeli lawyer Yoram Sheftel, who represented accused Nazi war criminal and Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk during his trial in the '80s, has long-been a polarizing figure in the country’s criminal justice system. Sheftel is one of a handful of eccentric characters portrayed on Netflix’s new docu-series “The Devil Next Door,” which follows ...

When was Demjanjuk deported?

On May 11, 2009, after filing numerous unsuccessful motions in the United States and Germany, Demjanjuk was finally deported to Germany. Upon arrival in Munich, he was arrested and sent to prison. Two months later, Demjanjuk was formally charged with nearly 28,000 counts of accessory to murder.

When was Demjanjuk sentenced to death?

On February 18, 1988, he was found guilty of the sole allegation in the indictment. Two months later, Demjanjuk was sentenced to death. The conviction and sentence triggered an automatic appeal, but by this time, stories of another 'Ivan' had begun to circulate.

Where was Ivan Demjanjuk born?

Ivan Demjanjuk was born in 1920 in the Ukrainian village of Duboviye Makharynsty, near Vinitsa. Life was little more than survival, even before Stalin starved to death about 7 million Ukrainians in a campaign to end private land ownership. In 1939, Demjanjuk was drafted into the Soviet Army.

Why was John Demjanjuk extradited to Israel?

On February 16, 1987, John Demjanjuk stood trial in Israel for crimes against humanity. The single count in the indictment was operating the gas chambers at Treblinka.

Who was the guard at the Sobibor death camp?

Sheftel introduced testimony by Ignat Danielchenko, a guard at the Sobibor death camp. (Unlike Auschwitz, which was both a slave labor camp and an extermination factory, Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec, and Chelmno were created and operated exclusively to exterminate large numbers of people in the shortest possible time.)

Who was Jerome Brentar?

Jerome Brentar was a Holocaust denier. Brentar addressed conferences of the Institute for Historical Review. In his talks before the I.H.R., Brentar insisted that Demjanjuk was innocent, because the crimes he was charged with are a fabrication created by the Jews.

How old was Ivan the Terrible in 2010?

In 2010, John Demjanjuk turned 90 years old. The man who came to be known as ‘Ivan the Terrible’ and the subject of the most protracted war crimes case in history is on trial in Germany for mass murder committed before most people alive today were born, and nearly 33 years after he was first identified.

When was Demjanjuk's trial?

1. Demjanjuk's trial before the special tribunal (Supreme Court Judge Dov Levin, and Jerusalem District Court Judges Zvi Tal and Dahlia Dorner) was opened with the reading out session on November 26, 1986. For practical purposes, the hearings commenced only on February 16, 1987 and this primarily in response by the Court to applications for postponement filed by the defense, to enable it to prepare properly for the trial.

When did the Nazi list come into possession?

In October 1975, there came into the possession of certain members of the U.S. Senate a list of Nazi war criminals living so the document alleged in the U.S. The list gave the suspects' names and personal particulars, in most cases also stating what they had done during World War II.

Background

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Demjanjuk was born in Dubovi Makharyntsi, a farming village in the western part of Soviet Ukraine. He grew up during the Holodomor famine, and later worked as a tractor driver in a Soviet collective farm. In 1940, he was drafted into the Red Army. After a battle in Eastern Crimea, he was taken prisoner by the Germans and was h…
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Loss of Us Citizenship and Extradition to Israel

  • Investigation by INS and OSI
    In 1975, Michael Hanusiak, the American editor of Ukrainian News, presented US Senator Jacob Javits of New York with a list of 70 ethnic Ukrainians living in the United States who were suspected of having collaborated with Germans in World War II; Javits sent the list to US Immigr…
  • Deportation and extradition proceedings
    The proceeding opened with the prosecution calling historian Earl F. Ziemke, who reconstructed the situation on the Eastern Front in 1942 and showed that it would have been possible for Demjanjuk to have been captured at the Battle of Kerch and arrive in Trawniki that same year.Th…
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Trial in Israel

  • Demjanjuk's trial took place in the Jerusalem District Court between 26 November 1986 and 18 April 1988, before a special tribunal comprising Israeli Supreme Court Judge Dov Levin and Jerusalem District Court Judges Zvi Tal and Dalia Dorner. The prosecution conceived of the trial as a didactic trial on the Holocaust in the manner of the earlier trial of Adolf Eichmann. It was th…
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Second Loss of Us Citizenship and Extradition to Germany

  • On 20 February 1998, Judge Paul Matia of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio vacated Demjanjuk's denaturalization "without prejudice," meaning that OSI could seek to strip Demjanjuk of citizenship a second time. OSI continued to investigate Demjanjuk, relying solely on documentary evidence rather than eye-witnesses. These documents were found in former Sovie…
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Trial in Germany

  • On 3 July 2009, prosecutors deemed Demjanjuk fit to stand trial. On 13 July 2009, prosecutors charged him with 27,900 counts of accessory to murder for his time as a guard at Sobibor. Demjanjuk was tried without any connection to a concrete act of murder or cruelty, but rather on the theory that as a guard at Sobibor he was per se guilty of murder, a novelty in the German just…
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Death and Posthumous Efforts to Restore Us Citizenship

  • John Demjanjuk died at a home for the elderly in Bad Feilnbach, Germany on 17 March 2012, aged 91.As a consequence of his appeal not having been heard, Demjanjuk is still presumed innocent under German law. Following his death, his relatives requested that he be buried in the United States, where he once lived. Jewish organizations have opposed this, claiming that his burial sit…
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Legacy

  • The 1989 film Music Box, directed by Costa-Gavras, is based in part on the Demjanjuk case. Author Philip Roth, who briefly attended the Demjanjuk trial in Israel, portrays a fictionalized version of Demjanjuk and his trial in the 1993 novel Operation Shylock. In 2019, Netflix released The Devil Next Door, a documentary by Israeli filmmakers Daniel Sivan and Yossi Blochthat focu…
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Bibliography

  1. Kudryashov, Sergei (2004). "Ordinary collaborators: The case of the Travniki guards". In Erickson, Mark; Erickson, Ljubica (eds.). Russia War, Peace and Diplomacy Essays in Honour of John Erickson....
  2. Douglas, Lawrence (2016). The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-17825-7.
  1. Kudryashov, Sergei (2004). "Ordinary collaborators: The case of the Travniki guards". In Erickson, Mark; Erickson, Ljubica (eds.). Russia War, Peace and Diplomacy Essays in Honour of John Erickson....
  2. Douglas, Lawrence (2016). The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-17825-7.
  3. Rashke, Richard (2013). Useful Enemies: John Demjanjuk and America's open-door policy for Nazi war criminals. Delphinium Books. ISBN 978-1480401594.
  4. Wagenaar, Willem Albert (1988). Identifying Ivan: A case study in legal psychology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-44285-6– via Google Books.