Demjanjuk, Testifying in Own Defense, Says He Was Never in Treblinka

On his first day of testimony in his own defense, John Demjanjuk told the Jerusalem court Monday that he was “never in Treblinka nor in Sobibor.” However, he did admit freely that the scar in his left armpit was from a blood-group tattoo which he carved out of his arm. He claimed the tattoo was a legacy from his German prisoner of war camp days and not a German SS trooper’s tattoo.

Speaking in measured Ukrainian, the war-crimes defendant insisted on making his statement, when questioned on details of his alibi.

Demjanjuk said he had attempted to erase his tatoo when he realized it was identical with those received by the SS. However, according to an expert witness for the prosecution, there are no records of POWs receiving the tattoo.

Demjanjuk is accused of being the SS recruit known as “Ivan the Terrible,” who drove hundreds of thousands of Jews into the Treblinka gas chambers. He refutes that accusation and claims to have remained a POW who joined the turncoat Russian Liberation Army which fought on the German side.

Demjanjuk was questioned by Defense Attorney John Gill, the document expert on the defense team who appears to have replaced leading counsel Mark O’Connor, dismissed by his client last week. Gill led the defendant through an account of his childhood in the Ukraine, asking him to describe in particular his family suffering during the devastating Ukrainian famine in the early 1930s.

But the main thrust of the defense was to concentrate on the period after Demjanjuk’s capture in 1942. Gill asked the defendant for details about the prison camps where he was held, the rations he ate, and the numbers of people transferred from camp to camp.