'Sadist', 'executioner', 'Nazi criminal': a series about a Ukrainian who served in death camps appeared on Netflix

On November 4, a documentary series about a Ukrainian who was a guard in German death camps, Ivan Demjanjuk, will be released on the Netflix streaming platform. The title of the five-episode film is “The Devil Next Door.” Edition with the BBC collected information about Demyanjuk and described his story.

“Sadist”, “executioner”, “Nazi criminal” - Demjanjuk was called different things.

Over the last 35 years of his life, he has gone through trials in three countries. He was deprived of citizenship, sentenced to death, acquitted, then convicted again. All this time, the debate about whether he is guilty or not has not subsided.

Seven years after the death of Demjanjuk, nothing has changed.

Those who defend him say no one has ever provided convincing evidence of his guilt. They themselves are accused of justifying the “monster.”

How Demjanjuk became “Ivan the Terrible”

Demyaniuk was born in 1920 in the village of Dubovy Makharinets (now the Vinnytsia region in Ukraine), survived the Holodomor, was called up to the Red Army in 1940. He participated in battles for the Crimea, in 1942 he was captured by Germany.

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After the war he ended up in West Germany, from where he emigrated to the USA in 1952. Here, now, John Demjaniuk began working as a mechanic at the Ford plant. In 1958, he received American citizenship.

Then it seemed that his, although not simple, biography is not much different from thousands of other no less dramatic personal stories of contemporaries of the Second World War.

Everything changed in the 1970s, when US authorities obtained a list of Ukrainian emigrants who allegedly collaborated with the Nazis. The list included Demjanjuk's name, as well as a copy of an identification card with a photo, like the one issued to him at the Trawniki concentration camp.

Almost 40 years later, in April 2011, the FBI would declassify its own 1985 report, which called the ID “likely fabricated.”

Before this happens, it will be perhaps the main evidence of the veracity of the accusations against Demyaniuk.

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In 1981, Demjanjuk was deprived of US citizenship, and in 1986 he was extradited to Israel. The local court proves that he is a guard at the Treblinka concentration camp, nicknamed “Ivan the Terrible” - it was “Terrible” in Demjanjuk that several surviving prisoners of the concentration camp immediately recognized.

According to their recollections, he directed the installation, which pumped gas into the death chambers.

This is how one of the Treblinka prisoners describes “The Terrible” in his memoirs: “Ivan was tall, and although his eyes seemed kind and pleasant, he was a sadist. He took pleasure in torturing his victims. He often attacked us when we were working […] he would force us to lie on the floor and beat us brutally. While he was doing this, his face expressed sadistic pleasure - he laughed and joked."

Death sentence and acquittal

Demjanjuk's lawyers based their defense, in particular, on trying to prove that the ID was a fake, and tried to convince the court that the witnesses who recognized him as “Ivan the Terrible” were mistaken.

Eliyahu Rosenberg, one of the key witnesses in the case, confidently stated during the trial that Demjanjuk is “The Terrible.” It later turned out that in 1947 the same Rosenberg said that “Ivan the Terrible” died during a prisoner uprising.

However, the court nevertheless believed the witnesses: in 1988, Demjaniuk was sentenced to death by hanging. During the appeal hearing, he was put in solitary confinement, where he was awaiting a final verdict.

In 1993, the Israeli Supreme Court unexpectedly acquitted Demjanjuk. The interrogation materials of 37 Treblinka guards, declassified after the collapse of the USSR, were saved, which stated that the real name of “Ivan the Terrible” was Ivan Marchenko, and the description of his appearance did not at all coincide with Demjanjuk’s appearance.

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The previous verdict was overturned, noting that the court “has reasonable doubt” that Demjanjuk is “Ivan the Terrible.”

However, the verdict did not talk about his innocence - the court insisted: there are enough reasons to believe that Demjanjuk was a guard in other Nazi concentration camps.

In the same 1993 year Demyanjuk returned to the United States, in 1998 he was restored to American citizenship.

New process

The quiet life did not last long: a case was reopened against Demjanjuk in the United States, in which, however, neither the nickname “Ivan the Terrible” nor “Treblinka” were mentioned. This time he was accused of being a guard at the Sobibor and Majdenek concentration camps.

Soon Demyanjuk was again deprived of citizenship and ordered to leave the country. Subsequently, a request for his extradition was sent by Germany, where a case was opened against him.

One of the pieces of evidence against Demjanjuk was again the same Trawniki concentration camp ID card, as well as other documents. There were no witnesses who saw Mr. Demjanjuk in the camp as a guard.

On May 12, 2011, a court in Munich found him an accomplice in the murder of almost 28 Jews in the Sobibor concentration camp and sentenced him to five years in prison.

Moreover, evidence of his direct involvement in these deaths was never found: this was the first time that the fact of service in a concentration camp was used as evidence of guilt in a murder in a German court.

“He was part of a killing machine, and he is an accomplice to the murders. There is no doubt about the evidence, and the relatives believe that it is necessary for everyone who participated in the murders of their families to answer for this,” said Cornelius Nestler, lawyer for the families of the Sobibor victims.

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Ivan Demjanjuk’s son John has a different opinion: “He loved life, family and humanity. History will prove that Germany used him as a scapegoat to shift the blame for the actions of the Nazis onto a helpless Ukrainian prisoner of war.”

However, the verdict of the German court never came into force; Ivan Demjanjuk died in March 2012 - before the court had time to consider his appeal.

As ForumDaily wrote earlier:

• Streaming platform Netflix will show the documentary series "The Devil Next Door". This is the story of an ordinary American citizen Ivan Demyaniuk, a native of Ukraine, who hid his dark past from everyone.

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