The 1950 “Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law” will be the basis for the trial of John Demjanjuk, the Ukrainian-born former U.S. citizen extradited to Israel a week ago. The law provides the death penalty and spells out in detail the crimes for which it can be imposed.
Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker from Cleveland, Ohio, was stripped of his American citizenship on the basis of overwhelming evidence that he served as a guard at the Treblinka death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II where he was known by inmates as “Ivan the Terrible” because of his extraordinary brutality. He is also alleged to have personally operated the gas chambers, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered.
The 1950 law identifies as a Nazi or Nazi collaborator a person who committed specific crimes against the Jewish people, any act constituting crimes against humanity and any act constituting war crimes. The law carefully defines each category:
“Crimes against the Jewish people means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy the Jewish people in whole or in part: 1) Killing Jews. 2) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to Jews.3) Placing Jews in living conditions calculated to bring about their physical destruction. 4) Imposing measures intended to prevent births among Jews. 5) Forcibly transferring Jewish children to another national or religious group. 6) Destroying or desecrating Jewish religious or cultural assets or values. 7) Inciting hatred of Jews.”
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Crimes against humanity under the law means: “murder, extermination, enslavement, starvation or deportation and other inhumane acts committed against the civilian population, and persecution on national, racial, religious or political grounds.”
DEFINITION OF WAR CRIMES
War crimes means: “murder, ill-treatment or deportation to forced labor or for any other purpose, of civilian populations of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the sea; Killing of hostages; plunder of public or private property; wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages and devastation not justified by military necessity.”
The law also provides prison sentences for membership in certain criminal organizations such as the SS and for criminal or bestial acts performed in prisons and concentration camps.
Demjanjuk is the first accused war criminal extradited to Israel for trial. He would be the second to be executed for war crimes if he is convicted and the death penalty is imposed and carried out. Adolf Eichmann, the deputy to gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler who was directly responsible for the mass deportation of Jews to death camps, was executed in Israel by hanging in 1962.
Eichmann, a top-ranking Nazi, was tracked down and kidnapped by Israeli intelligence agents in 1961 in Argentina, where he lived after World War II under an assumed name. Demjanjuk, by contrast, was a small cog in the Nazi murder machine who gained admission to the U.S. by lying about his collaboration with the Nazis.
Help ensure Jewish news remains accessible to all. Your donation to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency powers the trusted journalism that has connected Jewish communities worldwide for more than 100 years. With your help, JTA can continue to deliver vital news and insights. Donate today.
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.
