1987: A LOOK BACK: The trial of John Demjanjuk (12/27/87)

1987: A LOOK BACK

The trial of John Demjanjuk

The Nazi war crimes trial of John Demjanjuk began in earnest, in Jerusalem in a convention center theatre converted into a courtroom, on February 16. (The trial had actually begun on November 26, 1986.)

The prosecution presented its case by calling five historians, including specialists on the Holocaust, five survivors of Treblinka who pointed to the defendant' as "Ivan the Terrible," four Israeli police investigators, a physician at Ayalon Prison where Mr. Demjanjuk is confined, a German prosecutor, three documents/forensic experts, one fingerprints expert and one anthropologist. In addition, testimony was taken from three witnesses in Germany, an SS guard, a policeman and a medic.

The key to the case, however, is a document - origins unknown, supplied by the Soviets and delivered to Israel through the good offices of American industrialist Armand Hammer. The card, if it is genuine, places the defendant at the Trawniki training camp for guards and at the Sobibor death camp, but not at Treblinka, where "Ivan the Terrible" committed crimes against humanity.

At one point during the prosecution phase of the trial, Cleveland archivist William Turchyn reported that he had learned the true identity of the notorious "Ivan" of Treblinka. He was Alfred Billitz, a German.

On June 29, the defense entered a "no case" plea, whereby it argued that there is not enough evidence against the defendant for a conviction. The plea was rejected by the three-judge panel hearing the case.

Then, amid rumors of dissent within the defense team consisting of Americans Mark O'Connor and John Gill, and Israeli Yoram Sheftel, came the firing of the chief defense counsel. In a letter dated June 30 but hand-delivered on July 10, Mr. Demjanjuk stated that he was dismissing Mr. O'Connor. The attorney contested the dismissal, saying that his client did not know what he was doing when he signed the letter of dismissal.

In order to determine the defendant's true intentions, a special hearing was held on July 15. The matter was left up in the air for another five days as Mr. Demjanjuk asked for more time to make his final decision. On July 20, Mr. Demjanjuk came to another hearing and announced that he was firing Mr. O'Connor. The chief defense attorney, meanwhile, a day earlier had submitted his resignation to the court.

Thus, the defense was in a state of turmoil a week before it was to open its presentation.

On July 27 the defense called the defendant to the stand, as is customary in Israel. Mr. Demjanjuk vehemently denied that he was "Ivan the Terrible" or that he was at Treblinka, or Sobibor, or at the Trawniki training camp for guards, and told his life story.

Next came a forensic specialist, an expert on physiognomy (who was forced to withdraw a large portion of her testimony and later attempted to commit suicide), an expert on the KGB, a historian and expert on forced repatriation, a German lawyer, a psychologist, three documents experts and a forensic anthropologist.

One of the documents experts was repeatedly thwarted in his testimony, to the point that the defense sought to withdraw his testimony. The judges, however, ruled that this could not be done and the witness was forced to stay on the stand. However, he refused to answer questions about a tape recording purportedly made of a lecture he had given in which he apparently stated that the Trawniki card appears authentic. Afterwards, Ed Nishnic, administrator and president of the John Demjanjuk Defense Fund, was taken into police custody and questioned because of suspicions that he had influenced the forensic specialist to refuse further testimony.

Thus, after the first few weeks of dramatic testimony about the horrors of the Holocaust and Treblinka, the Demjanjuk trial returned to the central issue, that of identity, and everything boiled down, it seemed, to a battle of the experts. The question is, who is right about the Trawniki ID card?

The trial continues, and summations are scheduled for January 18, 1988.

In other developments, a Canadian fact-finding delegation that traveled to Israel for 10 days in March concluded that the state of Israel can conduct a fair trial of the accused. The delegation was composed of a Jewish lawyer, Alexander Epstein; two Ukrainian lawyers, Andrew Ogaranko and Bohdan Onyschuk; and two Ukrainian scholars, Danylo Struk and Yury Boshyk. All agreed that the Ukrainian nation is not on trial in Israel, as some groups and individuals have stated.

However, one member of the group, Mr. Onyschuk, expressed "some very grave misgivings" about the way the trial is being conducted, particularly deviations from Western standards of jurisprudence.

As an example he cited the court's decision to accept evidence from deceased eyewitnesses. He also cited problem areas: lack of funding for the defense; the "show element" of the trial; appearances and subsequent public statements by Israeli government officials who visit the courtroom; and undue interference of the trial judges in cross-examinations conducted by the defense.

A memo written by the Ukrainian American Bar Association and the Ukrainian Canadian Advocates Society also expressed serious reservations about some aspects of the proceedings.

Later, American attorney Walter Anastas was sent as an observer of these two professional lawyers' associations to attend the trial from the beginning of the defense case on July 27 through August 19. In his lengthy internal report to the two associations, Mr. Anastas reported extensively on the problems of procedural fairness and due process that had originally troubled the UABA and UCAS, and concluded that they "have not been significantly alleviated and some have been aggravated in the part of the trial observed."

Mr. Anastas found particularly troubling the judges' repeated intrusion into the conduct of the trial, improper attitude and treatment of objections by the bench, improper cross-examination by the prosecution, defective Ukrainian translations, the bench's insulting attitude toward the defense, defendant and defense witnesses, and the prejudicial time allocation and time constraints on the defense.

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