issue. “Do you believe there were people gassed in some chambers in Germany somewhere, or Poland, or one of these places?
“I don’t know, Your Honor,” Brentar said. “I wish I
“Did it happen or not?”
“People did die in the concentration camps.”
“From gassing?”
“Well, I guess it did happen,” Brentar said.
“To a few people or to a lot of people?”
“I would say more people died of starvation and typhus and overexertion in work than maybe of gassing.”
“I heard you say you were in Dachau,” the judge said, recalling earlier testimony.
“Yes, I was.”
“You said you don’t believe anybody was gassed in Dachau?”
“Because it’s proven there were
“You don’t believe anybody died in Dachau?”
“Not in Germany. There were
“Now, you have made an exhaustive study of Treblinka,” Angelilli pressed. “Did they gas people at Treblinka?”
“They had gas chambers in Treblinka, yes.”
“How many did they kill there?”
O’Connor was so upset at the judge’s line of questioning that he interrupted. “Why are you subjecting the witness to these questions?” he demanded.
“I have a duty to find out what this witness believes,” Angelilli said, “because he has been accused of bias by the government.”
“Now, do you believe
“I was
“Did they tell you how many? Did they say boxcars? Boxcars full of people? What did they say?”
“They said boxcars were brought in to Treblinka,” Brentar admitted.
“Did they say anybody ever left there
“That was never discussed.”
“Didn’t you ask them if it was true people died there and never got out?” Angelilli pressed harder.
“Well, there were people who died there. Yes.”
“You didn’t have the curiosity to know—to know for sure if they died? I have no further questions,” Judge Angelilli said.
In his re-direct, Mark O’Connor tried to repair the damage inflicted by Einhorn and Angelilli. “You want the
“Right. And this is the way the Holocaust should be presented to the world,” Brentar said. “And [not] just saying we Jews were the victims.
“You are not biased against the Jewish people?”
“Absolutely not. I helped when… the Jews came with these phony documents [after the war]. I did not reject
O’Connor offered into evidence a book about Treblinka written by Jean-Francois Steiner. The book described how Ivan the Terrible was killed during the August 1943 uprising at the camp. If Ivan the Terrible was already dead, how could Demjanjuk be Iwan Grozny? In anticipation of Brentar’s testimony, OSI attorney Michael Wolf had interviewed Steiner by phone before the hearing. Wolf told the court that Steiner had admitted to him that the story of Iwan Grozny’s death during the insurrection was fiction. Steiner then went on to say that he did not have any information or evidence that the real Ivan the Terrible was dead. He agreed to sign a sworn affidavit to that effect.
O’Connor next called for the videotaped testimony of Rudolf Reiss to be presented to the court.
O’Connor offered Reiss, a former Waffen SS sergeant and a Trawniki administrator, as an expert on the structure of the German army, conditions during World War II, and the administrative structure of Trawniki. O’Connor’s co-counsel John Gill had questioned Reiss under oath in Hamburg, where he lived.
The court watched Reiss claim in broken English that he had never volunteered to serve in the Waffen SS. He was conscripted, entered the corps as a private, worked his way up to
Trawniki had three supply administrations—one for cash, one for clothes and weapons, and one for food. Teufel worked for the clothes and weapons administration. Reiss was a cashier in the paymaster’s office along with Heinrich Schaefer, who had testified for the prosecution at Demjanjuk’s denaturalization trial.
In his direct examination of Reiss, Gill focused on the Trawniki card in an attempt to prove it was a forgery. Like Heinrich Schaefer before Judge Battisti, Reiss testified that he did not recall a Ukrainian named Iwan Demjanjuk at Trawniki and that he never saw an ID card identical to the one allegedly issued to Demjanjuk.
Gill handed Reiss photographs of the front and back of the card. Reiss studied them under a handheld magnifying glass for a few moments, then testified that one of the seals on the card had a light-to-dark shading. That flaw indicated that something was either blocked out or erased. Furthermore, Reiss said, the inscription on the seal was historically incorrect. And there was a grammatical error in the German word
Einhorn lost his patience. He objected to Reiss’s video testimony because neither O’Connor nor Gill had presented Reiss as a document expert and, therefore, the court had never approved of him as an expert graphologist.
“I’m going to have to support the objection,” Judge Angelilli ruled. “This man—not having been qualified to be an expert—can make
Angelilli’s decision was a serious blow to the Demjanjuk defense. Reiss was its only “document expert.” Denied expert status, Reiss could add little except to deny that Trawniki ever issued ID cards to its Trawniki men. As a cashier, Reiss testified, he checked “dog tags” for identification before paying salaries, not a card of any kind, once again suggesting that the Trawniki card allegedly issued to Demjanjuk was a forgery.
Like Gill, Einhorn had gone to Hamburg to cross-examine Reiss. The court now watched that segment of the videotape. Einhorn’s strategy was to completely destroy Reiss’s credibility as an expert witness and to portray him as biased.
“Are you a professionally trained or licensed document examiner?” Einhorn asked.
“No.”
“Have you done any postgraduate work in history?”
“I did not study history at a university,” Reiss said.
“Are you a professional printer?”
“No.”
“Do you read or speak Russian fluently?” Einhorn asked.
“No.”
“Ukrainian?”
“No.”
Einhorn pointed to the two photos of the card. “Would your opinion [of the card] change,” he asked, “if you
