The testimony of a Treblinka gas chamber operator executed by the Soviet Union 40 years ago is the basis of the latest appeal by Israeli lawyer Yoram Sheftel to reverse the conviction of his client John Demjanjuk for crimes against the Jewish people.
The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, extradited to Israel from the United States in 1986, was sentenced to death by a Jerusalem court in 1988 after a year-long trial.
Based on the eyewitness testimony of Holocaust survivors and on documents supplied by the former Soviet Union, Demjanjuk was identified as the Treblinka guard inmates dubbed “Ivan the Terrible” because of his brutality.
The man known as Ivan worked the gas chambers.
But Demjanjuk, who became a U.S. citizen after World War II, insists he is a victim of mistaken identity.
Sheftel has now asked the High Court of Justice to release Demjanjuk immediately without bail on the strength of new evidence.
It consists of statements by Nikolai Shelayev, who testified in the Soviet Union in 1950 that a camp guard named Ivan Marchenko was responsible for the crimes attributed to Demjanjuk.
Sheftel says Shelayev’s deposition was discovered by the defense only after Demjanjuk was tried and convicted. He was one of the witnesses to Nazi atrocities who appeared in Soviet courts after the war and was executed in 1952 for his complicity.
According to Shelayev, “Ivan the Terrible” was born in 1911 in Dniepropetrovsk, whereas Demjanjuk was born in 1920 in the Vinnitsa region of the Ukraine, Sheftel pointed out.
Marchenko was married and a father when he worked at Treblinka. Demjanjuk did not marry until 1947.
WJC HAS CONTRARY EVIDENCE
Shelayev described Marchenko as “tall, dark-haired, brown eyes, a straight lean face and a long straight nose,” a description that does not fit the burly Demjanjuk, Sheftel argued.
Shelayev testified that Marchenko had a diagonal scar on his face. Demjanjuk has no scar.
In New York, the World Jewish Congress produced a copy of a photo identity card for an Ivan Marchenko (spelled Iwan Martschjenko), who trained at the Trawniki camp where the SS prepared for duty in concentration camps.
This Marchenko was a farmer, married with three children, who had done military duty in the infantry, with no special work qualification, and trained from May 27 to July 10, 1941.
His height was 184 centimeters — a bit over 6 feet, 1 inch.
This man’s face was oval; he had black hair, gray eyes and scars on the back of his neck.
“The Marchenko that Shelayev describes is not the Marchenko on this ID form,” said Elan Steinberg, WJC executive director.
According to Sheftel, Shelayev’s testimony was supported by that of the Treblinka camp guards.
Therefore, the lawyer argued, the continued confinement of his client “caused irreparable damage to the image of Israel as a state of law and justice and played into the hands of Israel’s worst enemies.”
The Israeli High Court is scheduled to hear summations in April from the prosecution and defense before ruling on Demjanjuk’s appeal.
(JTA staff writer Susan Birnbaum in New York contributed to this report.)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
