"1988 Ivan the Terrible"
JERUSALEM — An Israeli court Monday sentenced John Demjanjuk, 68, a retired Ohio auto worker, to be hanged for war crimes he committed as Ivan the Terrible, a sadistic guard at a Nazi death camp in World War II.
"I'm innocent, innocent, innocent and God is my witness," loudly declared Demjanjuk, speaking in Ukrainian in a last-minute appeal to the three-judge court that had heard his case for the last 14 months.
"How was it possible for such an injustice to be done?" asked the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, who repeatedly shook his head and made the sign of the cross while an Israeli prosecutor listed the crimes committed by Ivan the Terrible at the Nazis' Treblinka death camp in Poland.
As he was brought into court to hear the judges' decision, the tall, bald- headed factory worker, who sat in a wheelchair because of a back problem, suddenly shouted in Hebrew, "I'm innocent."
The judges, saying there was "no shadow of a doubt" about Demjanjuk's guilt, rejected his pleas and an appeal from his lawyers against the death sentence. Nor was there any doubt, the judges said, in their decision to impose death.
"What punishment can be imposed on Ivan the Terrible, a person who killed hundreds of thousands? A thousand deaths will not exonerate him," said Judge Zvi Tal. "He served as a henchman . . . who humiliated, degraded and brutally persecuted innocent human beings zealously."
Wild applause and cheers rocked the crowded room, a former theater converted into a courtroom for the trial, as the judges concluded their sentencing. Holocaust survivors shouted curses and shook their fists at Demjanjuk. Many in the audience broke into singing "The People of Israel Live."
"Death, Death, Death, Bravo!" shouted others. A few teen-agers in the milling, excited crowd hollered curses at Yoram Sheftel, Demjanjuk's Israeli lawyer, as they tore his picture from a magazine and ripped it into shreds.
Under Israeli law, Demjanjuk's death sentence is automatically appealed to the High Court of Justice. Its decision may not come for several months as it reviews the lower court's verdict and sentence, court observers say.
After the sentencing, Demjanjuk's son, John Jr., 22, told reporters the court's verdict "is going to shame the Israeli government, the Israeli judicial system, the U.S. judicial system and most importantly the 6 million who were murdered in the Holocaust."
"I'd characterize these three judges to be the criminals," he said outside the courtroom. "Murdering one innocent victim is the same as murdering thousands."
Only one other person, Adolf Eichmann, has been convicted under the 1950 Israeli law covering the actions of Nazis and Nazi collaborators. Eichmann, the architect of the Nazis' "Final Solution" of the Jews during World War II, was hanged and his ashes were scattered at sea downwind from Tel Aviv 26 years ago.
Throughout the trial, Demjanjuk claimed he was drafted into the Soviet army at the start of the war, captured by the Germans, held in a prisoner-of- war camp, then forced to serve in a Nazi-led anti-Soviet army unit.
Two years ago, Demjanjuk, who had lived a quiet life in Parma, Ohio, was extradited to Israel after he was stripped of his U.S. citizenship for lying about his Nazi past when he moved to the United States in 1952.
Israeli prosecutors said he was Ivan the Terrible, one of two black-robed Ukrainian guards who operated the machinery that filled the death chambers of the Treblinka camp with lethal gas.
In 1942 and 1943, 870,000 Jews and several hundred Gypsies were killed at the camp, which was closed after an unsuccessful inmate uprising on Aug. 2, 1943, according to court testimony. Only 50 people survived the camp, where as many as 12,000 people were killed daily.
Last week the judges found Demjanjuk guilty of crimes against Jews, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
In his request for the death penalty, Israeli prosecutor Yona Blatman reminded the court of witnesses' testimony about what took place at Treblinka. Claiming that the verdict was based mostly on witnesses' accounts, John Gill, one of Demjanjuk's lawyers, had tried to point out the number of cases around the world in which witnesses recanted their testimony just before or after the death sentence was carried out.
In the audience was Frances Jason, 65, a survivor of the Nazis' Auschwitz camp, who said she had come from Los Angeles to witness the sentencing. She wept loudly as the prosecutor listed Demjanjuk's offenses.
"So what, he's an old man. He's going to die. So what," Jason said after the sentencing.
Turning away from the jubilant crowd, however, Tzippi Hoffman, 25, called the audience's reaction "shameful."
"The fact that kids could cheer so blatantly, I'm upset," she said as much of the crowd hurried outside to watch Demjanjuk being taken back to prison.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1988-04-26-0030370047-story.html