Natalia Kolesnikova, who had prosecuted Danilchenko and others in the 1949 Kiev trial, admitted as much. “All the men had invariably done worse things than they would admit,” she said. “And they tried to protect themselves—sometimes by accusing others to reduce the risk to themselves.”
If Danilchenko was to be of any use in the Demjanjuk trial, OSI would have to depose him as well as videotape his testimony in case he couldn’t or wouldn’t testify in America. As a first step in its promised cooperation with OSI, the Procuracy of the USSR—equivalent to the U.S. Department of Justice—assigned Kolesnikova to take Danilchenko’s sworn statement to assist OSI in its investigation and prosecution of John Demjanjuk. A certified copy of Danilchenko’s testimony, as well as statements from several other witnesses, arrived in Washington in January 1981, just weeks before the Demjanjuk trial was scheduled to open. The Danilchenko Protocol, as it was called, made the government’s case stronger.
But which case? And could it be trusted?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
As the prosecutor who tried Danilchenko in 1949, Natalia Kolesnikova knew a lot about Sobibor. Part of her interview strategy with him was to look for contradictions between what he said at his trial in Kiev and what he would tell her now. She was also hoping to hear more details about who Iwan Demjanjuk was, what he looked like, and what he did at Sobibor. Anything to help the Americans.
Kolesnikova would later tell writer Gitta Sereny that the Procuracy of the USSR was no longer interested in Danilchenko. “We only wanted to question him as a courtesy to the American prosecutors who wanted to know more about his connection to Demjanjuk and Sobibor.”
Before beginning her interview in Tyumen, Siberia, in November 1979, Kolesnikova explained to Danilchenko the responsibility of a witness under the Soviet Criminal Code and the penalty for making false statements, refusing to give a statement, or being evasive. Danilchenko signed a statement that he understood and accepted this responsibility.
The interview began.{What follows is not a literal transcription or translation.}
The gas chamber at Sobibor in camp three was camouflaged, secret, and guarded by a special detachment of SS guards. During the first six months of my service at the death camp, one or two trainloads of Jews arrived daily. Each train had approximately twenty-five cars with fifty to sixty Jewish men, women, and children in each. Sobibor also had a fleet of five or six trucks that it used to transport Jews from neighboring ghettos.
As a rule, all the Jews were killed on the day they arrived. That made Sobibor nothing more than a factory for mass murder. During the six months I worked there, it gassed fifteen hundred Jews a day until fall 1943, when fewer and fewer trains arrived.
The Germans organized the company of Sobibor guards into four platoons with approximately thirty men in each. The platoons were based on height. A German officer was in charge of the company. A
Demjanjuk was already at Sobibor and in the First Platoon when I arrived. I don’t know when he came there or from where. But I did know he trained at Trawniki because he told me.
Demjanjuk was taller than me. He had gray eyes, light brown hair, a receding hairline, and was stocky. He wore a black uniform with a gray collar and always carried a loaded rifle except when he guarded the outside perimeter of the camp. Then he carried a submachine gun to shoot any prisoner who tried to escape and to prevent unauthorized personnel from entering the camp.
Like all guards at Sobibor, including me, Demjanjuk took part in the mass killing process—from unloading the boxcars, to marching the new arrivals to the gas chamber, to forcing them inside. I don’t know if Demjanjuk ever killed anyone for resisting.
Unlike the healthy arrivals, the sick were immediately taken to camp three under the pretext of going to an infirmary for medical help. When they got there, they were shot. It is possible that some guards did the shooting on orders from the Germans. If so, I couldn’t say if Demjanjuk was among them because I was never present.
I saw Demjanjuk hit and rifle-butt prisoners at the unloading dock like all the other guards, including me. But from what I observed, he did not stand out as especially cruel.
The Germans considered Demjanjuk an experienced and efficient guard, and they repeatedly assigned him to round up Jews from the neighboring ghettos and villages and bring them back to die. For conscientiously following orders, the Germans rewarded him with extra leave. I am not sure if he also got a promotion.
Just before the Soviet army crossed into Poland, the Germans posted me and Demjanjuk to Flossenburg, Germany, to guard an aircraft factory and a concentration camp there. Each guard at Flossenburg, including Demjanjuk and me, was tattooed on the inside of the left arm with his blood type in case he was ever wounded. I still have my tattoo—the letter
In April 1945, as the Russian army began pushing across Germany, the Germans evacuated the entire camp of Regensburg, where Demjanjuk and I now worked, and assigned us to guard the prisoners on their march to another camp in Nuremberg. I escaped. I suggested that Demjanjuk come with me, but he refused. I never saw Demjanjuk again, and I have no idea what happened to him.
Danilchenko read the transcribed deposition without requesting any corrections or changes. Before signing it, he swore that the statement was correct. Either Kolesnikova or an assistant prosecutor showed Danilchenko three photo spreads with three pictures each, one of which was Demjanjuk. The three men in the first spread were soldiers in Soviet uniforms. Danilchenko correctly identified Demjanjuk. The men in the second set of photos wore Trawniki-type uniforms. Danilchenko correctly identified Demjanjuk. And the men in the third spread wore suits and ties. Once again, Danilchenko correctly identified Demjanjuk.
Two other former Sobibor guards also signed sworn statements that they knew Demjanjuk from Sobibor. One picked him out from the photo spread. The other did not, but recognized his name.
Kolesnikova was convinced that Danilchenko was telling the truth. None of what he said contradicted what he had testified to in his Kiev trial or what she knew about Sobibor and the mass murders that took place there. Most important, Danilchenko understood the penalty for perjury. And since Danilchenko had already served time for his crime, there was no advantage for him to lie.
OSI chose to view Danilchenko’s sworn statement as supportive of its Ivan the Terrible theory rather than a contradiction to it. Buttressed by the statement, Ryan decided to amend OSI’s complaint. Service at
Ryan also declined Moscow’s invitation to OSI investigators to depose, cross-examine, and videotape Danilchenko for themselves, instead of relying on Kolesnikova’s interrogation. The denaturalization trial of John Demjanjuk that was about to open would focus totally on Treblinka and Ivan the Terrible, not on Sobibor. The ghost of that decision would eventually come back to haunt OSI. When it needed Danilchenko, it would be too late. He would be dead. On February 10, 1981, the day before the trial opened, Judge Frank J. Battisti granted OSI’s motion to add Trawniki and Sobibor to the government’s complaint. Demjanjuk’s attorney, John W. Martin, was not dancing for joy. Even though he had known about the alleged Demjanjuk-Trawniki connection for more than a year because he had a copy of the Trawniki card photos, he felt the need for more time to prepare a defense against the new amendment.
Martin asked Judge Battisti for a sixty-day delay of trial. Battisti said no. Martin filed a motion for a jury trial. Battisti denied the motion.
