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Demjanjuk Witness Challenges Id Card

November 12, 1987
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An internationally recognized expert on documents told a Jerusalem court Tuesday that a key piece of prosecution evidence in the war crimes trial of John Demjanjuk of Cleveland, accused of operating the gas chamber at the Treblinka death camp, was probably not authentic.

Dr. Julius Grant, a British chemist who recently exposed the purported Hitler diaries as forgeries, raised what he thought were inconsistencies with the Trawniki identification card allegedly issued by the Nazi SS to Demjanjuk.

Grant testified Tuesday that the photo on it of Demjanjuk was not original, but had been attached later. On Monday he had said the signature on the document was “unlikely to be genuine.”

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