The credibility of a key prosecution witness in the trial of accused war criminal John Demjanjuk was challenged in Jerusalem district court Wednesday.
The witness, Eliyahu Rosenberg, a Holocaust survivor who earlier in the trial identified Demjanjuk as the Treblinka death camp guard known as “Ivan the Terrible,” was questioned about an entry in his diary in December 1945 that “Ivan” had been clubbed to death by escaping Jewish prisoners.
This followed his recall to the witness stand during the summation by state prosecutor Michael Shaked, a rare but not unprecedented procedure in Israeli courts.
But the defense seized on the opportunity to stress the discrepancy between Rosenberg’s diary and his identification of the defendant. Rosenberg was forced to explain that portions of his diary were based on hearsay.
The defense stressed that the diary, written in Yiddish in Rosenberg’s hand, gave no indication of what was an eyewitness account and what was hearsay.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
