AKA Iwan Demjanjuk

Born: 3-Apr-1920
Birthplace: Kiev, Ukraine

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Victim, Criminal

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Retired auto worker hounded for war crimes

Military service: Soviet Army (1940)

Formerly in the Red Army, John Demjanjuk volunteered for the German SS and became a Wachman at Sobibor concentration camp. He somehow managed to emigrate to and live in the US since 1951, and in Cleveland since 1958. On 25 June 1981 a Federal count stripped Demjanjuk of his US Citizenship because he obtained it under false pretenses, namely, hiding the fact that he worked in German concentration camps. In 1986 he was extradited to Israel, and was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death there in 1988. Things thus seemed fairly tidy, the matter settled.

But Demjanjuk was freed of his death sentence several years later when evidence surfaced that he was the victim of mistaken identity. Apparently instead of volunteering for the SS, he was held prisoner in a forced labor camp by the Nazis in Poland. The guard, "Ivan the Terrible", was in fact some other individual. Demjanjuk regained his U.S. citizenship in 1998.

And the judge who ruled that Demjanjuk was Ivan, Gilbert Merritt, now feels that Demjanjuk was conspiratorially deprived of his constitutional rights by the Federal Government's deliberate withholding of evidence in his favor.

One of the individuals primarily responsible for the original prosecution of Demjanjuk, OSI attorney Neal Sher, was disbarred after he was found embezzling from a Holocaust foundation.

Father: Nikolai
Mother: Oren
Wife: Vera (m. 1-Sep-1947)
Daughter: Lydia (b. Apr-1950)
Son: John, Jr.

    Ford Motors Brook Park, OH
    Taken Prisoner of War
    Naturalized US Citizen 14-Nov-1958
    Extradited from the United States to Israel (1986)
    Crimes Against Humanity reversed on appeal (1993)
    Citizenship Revoked 2002
    Risk Factors: Gout

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