Useful Enemies

the identifying witnesses,” an exhausted Judge Levin began. “We are aware of human weakness and the failings of human memory. But we have also learned how powerful are the torments imprinted on the souls of the survivors who were snatched like burning brands from that inferno. How fresh is their wound which has not yet healed! Their memory is a living memory. Their testimony is a truthful testimony.”

The court went on to reject Demjanjuk’s insinuations that Ivan the Terrible was just a little fish and should not be compared with Adolf Eichmann. The court also rejected the argument that death camp guards obeyed an order against their will. They served the Nazis in uniform while armed, Judge Dorner had pointed out, receiving a salary and enjoying freedom of movement.

“We find that the defendant is Ivan the Terrible,” Judge Levin concluded. “The deeds of that Ivan, as specified in the indictment, have been proved before us…. We convict the defendant of:

“Crimes against the Jewish people.

“Crimes against humanity.

“War crimes.

“Crimes against persecuted people.

“Given on this day: 18 April, 1988.”

• • •

The court reconvened a week later to pronounce the sentence. Demjanjuk sat in the courtroom in a wheelchair, allegedly in pain. He had no choice. Israeli law required the accused to be present when the sentence was read. Demjanjuk didn’t even try to stand up when the judges entered. His back was too sore.

Once again, the courtroom was packed. Would John Demjanjuk hang or spend the rest of his life in Ayalon Prison? State attorney Yonah Blatman asked for the noose. He argued: “Demjanjuk stood at the entrance to hell and was zealous in the extreme. He was one of the greatest oppressors the Jewish people ever had. With every fresh transport, Demjanjuk committed premeditated murder 100,000 times over.”

Demjanjuk repeatedly crossed himself during Blatman’s plea.

Defense counsel John Gill reminded the court of the Frank Walus case in Chicago, where eleven survivor eyewitnesses had been wrong. He further argued that the death penalty was morally unacceptable. “Tendencies in enlightened countries has [sic] been away from it,” Gill pleaded. “Don’t commit a second horrendous crime.”

After the prosecution and defense completed their arguments for and against the death penalty, Judge Dov Levin gave the floor to John Demjanjuk.

“The convicted man has the last word,” he said.

Demjanjuk pleaded: “It has been very painful for me to listen to reports of the tragedy that befell your people during the Nazi period. Six million died a terrible death, and I hope they reached the kingdom of heaven. I believe there was an Ivan the Terrible, but I was not that man. Last week you convicted me. And you made a big mistake, and God will be my witness.”

The court recessed for three hours. When the judges returned to the courtroom, Demjanjuk shouted in Hebrew, “I am innocent!”

Judge Zvi Tal then read the sentence in a flat voice devoid of all emotion: “Most things can be forgiven, but in this case there is no forgiving, not in law and not in feeling. Demjanjuk’s crimes stand above time. It is as if Treblinka still existed, Iwan were still swinging his sword or his iron pipe, cutting into live flesh, causing streams of blood…. There is no name to describe these crimes and there is no adequate punishment.

“We decree the death penalty.”

The courtroom erupted in joy. Spectators applauded and danced. They chanted “Death, death, death!” They sang folk songs. “Death to Iwan!” They wept and hugged. “Death to all Ukrainians!” They hurled threats at Yoram Sheftel. A group of school kids sang Am Israel Hai—The Jewish People Live! “Death! Death! Death!”

One lone survivor’s voice rose above the din: “May his name and memory be erased and forgotten!”

Demjanjuk crosses his heart upon hearing the pronouncement of his death sentence.

• • •

Ukrainian communities across the United States and Canada were shocked and angry.

“It’s a travesty of justice,” the Reverend John Bruchok, pastor of St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Lorain, Ohio, said. “I saw his face. I saw the face of a gentle man.”

In Demjanjuk’s hometown of Parma, Ukrainians spoke out with bitterness:

“He was just a man, not a monster…”

“This is all a terrible mistake…”

“It stinks. They just needed a scapegoat…”

“It’s been so many years. And he doesn’t bother anybody. Why stir things up?”

“It’s like everyone’s saying the Ukrainians are the evil ones…”

As if to prove the point, vandals spray-painted St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Church, where the Demjanjuk family worshipped, with purple circles like targets.

For its part, the Jewish community hunkered down until the storm blew over. Cleveland rabbis reported threats to their synagogues. Akron Jews suffered such a barrage of threats that they asked for special police protection.

Editorials around the world called for a commutation to a life sentence both because there was a reasonable doubt about the validity of the evidence against Demjanjuk, and because to hang a man was barbaric.

The London Times spoke for many countries when it editorialized: “If Israeli authorities could see their way to commuting the death sentence, this would further mark the emergence of Israel as the civilized state it aspires to be.”

• • •

It was now up to the Supreme Court of Israel, which was required under Israeli law to review all death sentences. As final arbiter, it had the authority to commute Demjanjuk’s sentence to life in prison. Or it could uphold the defense appeal arguing judicial bias and vacate the verdict of Judge Levin’s court. All John Demjanjuk could do in his cell on death row was pray… and wait.

It would be a five-year wait.

Part Four: Epilogue

While John Demjanjuk was on trial for his life in Israel, four noteworthy events were occurring elsewhere. If three of the events brought some measure of justice—or the promise of it—the fourth raised questions about the very existence of justice.

First, Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, was sentenced to life in prison. Unlike Israel, France did not have the death penalty. Barbie died of leukemia four years later at the age of seventy-seven while Demjanjuk was sitting on death row.

Second, based on eyewitness testimony, the Soviets executed Feodor Fedorenko by firing squad for serving the Nazis as a guard at Treblinka and for beating and driving Jews into the gas chambers. The Soviets had waited until John Demjanjuk was safely locked in an Israeli prison, facing a hangman’s noose, before they executed Fedorenko. His death supported Demjanjuk’s argument that deporting him to the Soviet Union would have been a death sentence.

Third, the Soviet Union and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council issued a joint statement that had implications for Demjanjuk’s future appeal before the Israeli Supreme Court. The Soviets agreed to open their archives on Nazi genocide to American historians and archivists. The agreement included an invitation to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which had not yet opened, to microfilm or microfiche Soviet Holocaust-related documents, millions of which were haphazardly filed in a string of archives across the Soviet Union. The documents included records on Nazi executions of Jews, young communists, and Gypsies, as well as captured German documents like the three Trawniki ID cards that the Soviets had provided to Israeli prosecutors during the