The U.S. Department of Justice presented Israel with original documents used in trials against John Demjanjuk, a wartime Nazi camp guard who was convicted and then acquitted by Israel of being the cruel Treblinka warden "Ivan the Terrible."
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Demjanjuk was convicted in 1988 by a special panel of judges in the Jerusalem District Court, confirming that he was indeed the person known as "Ivan the Terrible," who committed exceptionally brutal acts against Jews imprisoned in the Treblinka extermination camp. Demjanjuk was sentenced to death, but in 1993 an expanded panel of five judges in Israel's Supreme Court weighed his appeal and concluded that his identification as "Ivan the Terrible" was doubtful, but that there was enough evidence to show that he was a guard in Sobibor. Demjanjuk was deported back to the United States that same year.
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John Demjanjuk, a wartime Nazi camp guard who was convicted and then acquitted by Israel of being Treblinka warden 'Ivan the Terrible'
(Photo: EPA)
The documents were handed over during a historic and emotional meeting in Jerusalem between Eli Rosenbaum, a representative from the U.S. Department of Justice, and Attorney Efrat Greenbaum, who serves as director of the International Department in the Office of the State Attorney, and Jonathan Mathias, director of the Photography Archives at the Yad Vashem archives department.
The documents provided by Rosenbaum, who serves as counsel for the United States in war crimes cases, included Demjanjuk's original identification card issued to him by the SS.
When Demjanjuk's legal proceeding in Israel was over he returned to the United States, and the documents were transferred to the American lawsuit for the purpose of pursuing deportation and denaturalization proceedings against him for lying on his application for citizenship.
At the end of the process, Demjanjuk was deported to Germany, and subsequentl, the documents were transferred to Germany for use in the criminal trial conducted against him in Munich, where he was ultimately convicted in 2011 for participating in over 28,000 murders of Jewish prisoners in the Sobibor extermination camp. He died a year later.
During the meeting with representatives from Israel's Justice Ministry, Rosenbaum shared his experiences as a litigant in cases involving Nazi war criminals, particularly his involvement in the proceedings against Demjanjuk in the United States, where he served as the director of Special Investigations in the U.S. Department of Justice.
Rosenbaum acknowledged the significant cooperation he received from Israel and emphasized that the delivery of the documents, after his many years of work in the field of Nazi crimes, symbolized closure for him.