inflame the emotions of the spectators, and try the patience of the judges. No matter how gently or firmly he questioned the Treblinka survivors in his hunt for inconsistencies and memory lapses, he could not shake them from their conviction: John Demjanjuk, sitting seventy feet away from them, was Ivan the Terrible of their nightmares. Just as George Parker had predicted in his doubt memo, they were totally convinced and totally convincing.
If the testimony of the Treblinka survivors united Israel, however briefly, it reopened the wounds of suspicion and racial hatred on both sides of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. For the seventy thousand Jews living along the east bank of the river, the trial evoked memories of pogroms and Ukrainian militiamen helping the Nazis round up, rob, and murder Jews.
“Every nation has its heroes and collaborators,” said one elderly emigre from Odessa who survived by fleeing before the advancing German army, like Miriam Radiwker and her husband. “And it is true that
West of the river, Ukrainians blamed the Jews for their own holocaust. “People talk about how we Ukrainians waved flags to greet the Germans when they invaded Ukraine,” the owner of a popular Ukrainian tavern said. “But nobody mentions the way Jews popped up in good positions when the Communists came. They suddenly appeared, running around in red armbands.”
The president of the Cleveland branch of the Ukrainian Congress, which represented most of the 1.5 million Ukrainian Americans, sadly observed: “This case has created exactly what the Jews want to prevent—more anti- Semitism.”
A Ukrainian professor of history observed: “My concern is that when they get done with us, we’ll look like barbarians.” The recent telecast of the docudrama
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Each side called five expert witnesses to pass judgment on the authenticity of the Trawniki card. As a group, they reviewed every feature of the document—signatures, photograph, printing, typewriter, ink, paper, seals, and blotches. They defended their conclusions for days on end through in-court demonstrations using diagrams, charts, photo overlays and montages, and probability projections. The pendulum of their testimony swung from fascinating to boring. Most of the time it was stuck on boring, which encouraged so much spectator chatter that Judge Levin had to repeatedly call for order because it was hard to hear the testimony.
It was up to the judges to decide who was more expert.
The prosecution opened the face-off with Amnon Bezaleli, chief document examiner of the Israeli police department and head of its identification laboratory. Bezaleli specialized in handwriting analysis, and in particular, in forged drivers’ licenses—three thousand per year—working in a laboratory equipped with state-of-the-art optical tools including comparison microscopes, stereoscopes, infrared and ultraviolet ray scanners, and wavelength gauges.
Bezaleli’s primary task for the prosecution was to authenticate the three signatures on the Trawniki card—SS Major Karl Streibel, supply officer Ernst Teufel, and Iwan Demjanjuk. His secondary task was to examine the printing, ink, and major blemishes on the card. Projecting enlarged photos on a courtroom screen, Bezaleli walked the judges through his analyses for two full days. His conclusions were crisp, clear, and confident:
• The signatures of Streibel and Teufel were authentic with certainty, but the signature of Iwan Demjanjuk was problematic and, thus, only probably authentic.
• Only one typewriter was used for the card—an Olympia model 23 manufactured in 1930. Everything about the typewriter was consistent with a card dating to 1941. There were no discrepancies.
• The stiff green paper used for the card was composed of rag, textiles, and bits of garments. It was a low- quality paper consistent with wartime scarcities, and it dated to the early 1940s.
• Only one kind of ink was used to create the official stamp, which was partly on the photo and partly on the card. The stamp was, therefore, not forged.
• The picture on the card had been reglued at some point. It could not be determined, however, whether the picture had accidentally fallen off the card or had been deliberately removed and replaced.
• Based on all the tests and observations, the card was not
As decisive and confident as he was, Bezaleli left two big issues dangling: Demjanjuk’s signature
The second prosecution witness was Gideon Epstein, who had testified six years earlier as the government’s only expert document examiner at the 1981 Demjanjuk deportation trial in Cleveland. Epstein reached the same conclusions in Jerusalem that he had in Cleveland. They were identical to those of Bezaleli: The signatures of Streibel and Teufel were authentic, and the signature of Demjanjuk was only probably authentic.
In preparation for the Jerusalem trial, Epstein conducted a series of advanced tests he had not had time to perform in 1981. He examined the different color inks on the card, studied the large yellow-orange stains under ultraviolet light, and examined the perforations on the Trawniki card photo that did not appear on the paper it was glued to.
Epstein concluded:
• The writing on the card was done with both a fountain pen and pencils ranging in color from aqua blue to purple-black. Because the use of different colored pencils and ink was common on World War II documents, the color variations were of little significance.
• The yellow-orange stains were probably dried glue. It would take an evaluation by a certified chemist to determine with absolute certainty whether the substance was glue or a solvent. The latter would suggest card tampering and possible forgery.
• In all likelihood, the perforations on the picture were staple holes. It was common to find such holes on the photo but not on the document to which it was attached. Photographs were frequently stapled to a temporary document so they wouldn’t be lost in a paper shuffle.
• There were different typeface and font designs on the Trawniki card. Such variations in the printing or typesetting were normal on World War II documents.
• The half of the official seal on the photograph and the half of the seal on the page matched perfectly. This proved that only one stamp was used.
Like Bezaleli, Epstein concluded that the card was not forged. And like Bezaleli, he left the same two issues dangling—the authenticity of Demjanjuk’s signature and the possible substitution of card photos.
The third prosecution expert witness was Reinhardt Altman, a photo identification expert from Wiesbaden, Germany. Altman had worked for the German police for nearly thirty years, starting as a criminal investigator and ending up as a photo identification instructor. His job was to compare the photo on the Trawniki card to proven photos of John Demjanjuk—including two contemporary video frames of him entering the Jerusalem courtroom—to determine if the picture on the card was his.
A pioneer in the field of photo identification, Altman chose twenty-four predictive facial features for comparison, including jaw, hairline, eyes, nose, and especially the distinct configuration of the ear and the delicate line patterns of the inner lip. Then he conducted three tests. First, he compared the Trawniki photo with proven Demjanjuk photos, feature by feature. Next, he cut reproductions of the photos in half, placing the left half of the Trawniki photo next to the right half of known photos. Finally, he superimposed a proven photo over the Trawniki photo and concluded: “There is not the slightest doubt that these photographs are of one and the same person.”
