On 12.05.2011, Demjanjuk was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

On the very same day, "Revisionist" champion Thomas Kues, as was to be expected, wrote an indignant blog commenting this sentence.

“Can you give the name of just one Jew, with proof, who was gassed?”

On the RODOH forum's thread Camps with gas chambers, our old friend Greg Gerdes, who now calls himself "thunder", is emulating another (no less obnoxious, though perhaps a little more intelligent) "Revisionist" charlatan by asking the question quoted in the heading of this blog regarding every camp mentioned in his ignorant list of "Holocaust gassing" sites (which was addressed in my RODOH post # 11608).

The Demjanjuk trial has started (updated)

It certainly promises to be an interesting experience. Both Blatt and Schelvis will testify.

The good place to get info on this is http://www.spiegel.de/thema/john_demjanjuk. Cleveland Plain Dealer also seems to be a good source.

Here's a decent recap of Demjanjuk's history before this trial from them (although it gets numerous historical details incorrect, like saying that 1.5 million people were killed in Majdanek instead of about 80,000):

http://xmedia.live.advance.net/cleve/plaindealer/061908_demjanuk_pdf/Demjanjuk/DemjPart1.pdf
http://xmedia.live.advance.net/cleve/plaindealer/061908_demjanuk_pdf/Demjanjuk/DemjPart2.pdf
http://xmedia.live.advance.net/cleve/plaindealer/061908_demjanuk_pdf/Demjanjuk/DemjPart3.pdf
http://xmedia.live.advance.net/cleve/plaindealer/061908_demjanuk_pdf/Demjanjuk/DemjPart4.pdf

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Update 1: and so it begins. D's lawyer accuses the judges and prosecutors of arbitrariness - so many perpetrators were acquitted, and yet the man who just followed orders now must pay?

This argument is quite weak, though. If we go to JuNSV site and click on Tatort Sobibor, we will see these data:

Let's correct one misconception about John Demjanjuk...

... which is still present to this day in some articles about his case, namely, that it's still possible that he was "Ivan the Terrible" of Treblinka, in addition to his service in Sobibor. The latter is not in doubt, as it is based on solid documentary evidence. But the former charge was based solely on eyewitness identification from the start, and was a pure travesty.

Contrary to Tom Teicholz, the eyewitness identification of a person 35-40 years after the fact is not trustworthy in principle. You just don't do that (and this is even aside from the fact that the identification procedures themselves in this case were found to be extremely flawed by Willem Wagenaar, one of the leading experts on the psychology of eyewitness identification). This applies both to the survivors and a single perpetrator who identified Demjanjuk. The latter identification is actually even more problematic, as Otto Horn was caught either lying about the initial identification procedure (which had been flawed), or misremembering it, which is just as problematic for his credibility as an identifying witness. (In fact, OSI tried to cover up the initial reports of Horn interrogation; this and other OSI misdeeds in the Demjanjuk case were characterized as "prosecutorial misconduct" and "fraud on the court" by the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.)

So yes, Demjanjuk had been sentenced to death without any credible evidence whatsoever (even though the judges probably believed the identifications to be credible). But absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence, so how do we know that he wasn't Ivan the Terrible? It's simple: in postwar interrogations of dozens of Treblinka Wachmaenner another person is identified as Ivan the Terrible, Ivan Marchenko. Marchenko was an entirely "separate" man with a different bio from that of Demjanjuk and one of his daughters (Kateryna Kovalenko) was still alive in 1990s.

But there's still this silly ad hoc "alias hypothesis" going around. It is easily debunked by the fact of the existence of real Marchenko, who was Ivan the Terrible. Sometimes a useless bit of information is bandied about, namely, that Demjanjuk once listed his mother's maiden name as Marchenko, even though her maiden name was different. Marchenko is as common surname in Ukraine, as Smith is in the US. Actually, Demjanjuk claimed to have forgotten his mother's maiden surname, so it's no wonder he inserted such a commonplace surname instead.

But the main evidence actually lies in the fact that in official German documents Demjanjuk is always listed under his real surname. I.e., he was called "Demjanjuk" outloud by the Germans, both in the Trawniki training school and in the camps. Thus his fellow guards would surely know his real name. But not a single one stated that "Marchenko" was an alias of a "Demjanjuk". Also, since both the Germans and fellow guards knew his real name, there was no rationale whatsoever to use an alias.

Ivan Demjanyuk may have been "experienced and efficient" as a guard at Sobibor (his pal Danilchenko claimed so), and we will see in the coming weeks what the German prosecutors have in store regarding his role. But we do know that he never was a breast-slicing psycho from Treblinka.

Samuel K. and Belzec

Interesting news from Germany, as the judicial proceedings against a former Nazi extermination camp guard John Demjanjuk (Ivan Demjanyuk) are about to begin on Nov. 30.

One of the witnesses called for the trial is Samuel K., a Trawniki man himself, as Der Spiegel informs us.

He served at Belzec as a guard. Turns out he was never prosecuted, even though he had been interrogated by the German authorities in 1969, 1975 and 1980. Apparently noting this curious double standard, the Ludwigsburg Central Office of the State Justice Administration for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes has started an official inquiry regarding his past.

There are two more interesting bits in this story that caught my eye. First of all, the man's testimony. He never denied what happened in Belzec:

Uns war allen klar, dass dort die Juden vernichtet und später dann auch verbrannt wurden.

We were all aware that Jews were being exterminated there, and later also burnt.

The second bit is the possible charge against Samuel K.:

dringend verdächtig, Beihilfe zu der grausamen Ermordung von mindestens 434.000 Menschen geleistet zu haben

strongly suspected to have aided the brutal murder of at least 434,000 people

The main German body dealing with the prosecution of Nazi war criminals now seems to accept the Hoefle telegram's number of Jewish victims of Belzec. Not long ago the reasonable estimates ranged from about 500,000 to 600,000, but the telegram found and published [PDF] in 2001 by historians Tyas and Witte put the number at 434,508 victims until the end of 1942 (and Belzec stopped functioning at the end of 1942). Thus the new research enters the "public sphere", slowly but surely.

Holocaust Survivor To Testify For Demjanjuk

A surprising update in Demjanjuk's legal battle against his former supporter, which Sergey reported on earlier this week:

Holocaust survivor wants to testify for Demjanjuk
Friday, May 05, 2006
John Caniglia
Plain Dealer Reporter
A Holocaust survivor came to the defense of accused Nazi guard John Demjanjuk Thursday in a civil trial against the Seven Hills man. Martin Lax, a Cleveland businessman, showed up in court and offered to testify in a lawsuit filed by Jerome Brentar, who wants $2 million from the Demjanjuk family for helping Demjanjuk fight charges that he was a Nazi guard. Lax, 81, told a judge that he walked out of the Gunskirchen concentration camp in Austria 61 years ago, after spending time at Auschwitz and other camps. The thought that a Holocaust survivor would testify on Demjanjuk's behalf stunned the handful of people in the courtroom of Cuyahoga County Com mon Pleas Judge Timo thy McGinty.
"On the face of it, it is very strange that a survivor would con tribute in any way to the defense of a Nazi war criminal," Alan Rosenbaum, author of the book Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals, said later in an interview. McGinty questioned Lax with the jury out of the courtroom. The judge ruled that Lax could testify to the jury today.
Brentar sued Demjanjuk and his family to get payment for his expenses and 26 trips to Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. Demjanjuk's family says there was never an agreement to repay Brentar, that Brentar went out on his own. The family contends that Brentar was pushing his neo-Nazi views, which Lax abhors. Lax told McGinty that he spoke with Brentar in 1986. "He bragged about spending his money out of the goodness of his heart," Lax said.
Demjanjuk was sentenced to death in Israel for being a camp guard. The conviction was later overturned. He returned to the United States in 1993, and federal prosecutors accused him of being a guard at three camps. In December, a judge ordered him deported, a ruling he is appealing.
Lax said he believes Demjanjuk was a guard at the camps, saying in an interview that "he's one of them, a Nazi."

The crucial point seems to be that the survivor, Martin Lax, can testify to what Brentar said at the time of the original Demjanjuk trial in the 1980s: "He bragged about spending his money out of the goodness of his heart."

Demjanyuk and Holocaust deniers (Part I)

(Last revised: 29.01.2010)

Demjanyuk became a "revisionist" icon for a very good reason. A botched Israeli trial gave deniers a chance to argue once again that Holocaust witnesses' testimonies are unreliable, that the evidence was forged, that the Nazi hunters were after innocent people, etc.

I'm not going to defend the first Israeli Demjanyuk trial. I reject the argument that since in the end Demjanyuk's death sentence was overturned, the justice was served. That happened by chance - USSR fell and new, exculpating evidence appeared. There never was any documentary evidence presented for Demjanyuk ever being in Treblinka, and the sentencing was based mostly on the unreliable identification procedures.

Neither am I going to defend OSI's conduct. In 1993 the judges of the US Court of Appeals of 6th Circuit concluded:

Thus, we hold that the OSI attorneys acted with reckless disregard for the truth and for the government's obligation to take no steps that prevent an adversary from presenting his case fully and fairly. This was fraud on the court in the circumstances of this case where, by recklessly assuming Demjanjuk's guilt, they failed to observe their obligation to produce exculpatory materials requested by Demjanjuk.

In fact, we will see an example of such a fraud very soon.

What I am going to argue is that the historical conclusions that deniers draw from this case are unwarranted.

But first let's establish what is known about Demjanyuk's war-time activities.

Read more!

Ivan Nikolajevich Demjanyuk was born on April 30, 1920 in Dubovi Makharyntsi (Dubovyje Makharintsi) in Vinnits'ka (Vinnitskaja) oblast.

Several documents establish Demjanyuk's whereabouts during the war:

• Doc. no. 1. Found in Vinnits'ka oblast archive. Trawniki service identity pass no. 1393 identifies an Ukrainian, "Iwan Demjanjuk", son of "Nikolai", born on April 30, 1920 in "Duboimachariwzi", as serving in Okzow since September 22, 1942 and in Sobibor since March 27, 1943. This is the most famous document related to the Demjanyuk case. Deniers and Demjanyuk's defence argue that it is a KGB forgery. We will discuss these claims later. I have not seen any challenges to authenticity of the documents which follow.
• Doc. no. 2. Found in the Lithuanian Central State Archives in Vilnius. Disciplinary report of 20.01.1943. States that two days earlier 4 Trawniki-trained guards were apprehended for violating camp quarantine. One of the guards is identified as "Deminjuk", with identification number 1393 (i.e., the same as in the first document).
• Doc. no. 3. Found in FSB archives. Transfer roster which documents the transfer of 80 Trawnikis to Sobibor on March 26, 1943. 30th in the list is "Iwan Demianiuk", identification number 1393, with date and place of birth the same as John Demjanyuk. The date of transfer is compatible with the document no. 1.
• Doc. no. 4. Found in FSB archives. Transfer roster dated October 1, 1943, which documents the transfer of 140 men from Trawniki to Flossenbuerg. 53rd in the list is "Iwan Demianjuk", with the same date and place of birth and identification number as the previous Ivans.
• Doc. no. 5. Found in the German Federal Archives in Berlin. Flossenbuerg weapons log of April 1, 1944, which documents that Wachmann "Demianiuk" received a rifle on October 8, 1943, i.e. a week after the person in document no. 6 was transferred to Flossenbuerg.
• Doc. no. 6. Found in the German Federal Archives in Berlin. Flossenbuerg daily roster, which shows that on October 4, 1944, "Demenjuk 1393" was assigned to guard the Bunker Construction Detail.
• Doc. no. 7. Found in the German Federal Archives in Berlin. An undated Flossenbuerg roster of 117 guards, listing "Demenjuk" with identification no. 1393 in entry no. 44. The roster can be dated as created in the period from Dec. 10, 1944 to Jan. 15, 1945.
• Doc. no. 8. A very ironic item in the list - Demjanyuk's own "Application for Assistance", which he submitted in March of 1948 to the Preparatory Commission of the International Refugee Organization. While he supplied the false information about his residence throughout the war, he noted that from April 1937 to January 1943 he was a driver in "Sobibor, Chelm, Poland". Sobibor was not a well-known name at that time, and the fact that Demjanyuk himself wrote it down (even while giving the wrong dates and lying about being a driver there) is highly incriminating.
• Doc. no. 9. Finally, in his application for an American visa on December 27, 1951, Demjanyuk wrote that from 1936 to 1943 he resided in Sobibor, Poland.

Source: Findings of Fact in USA v. Demjanjuk.

So what can we say on the basis of these documents? Even if one disregards the first document as a forgery (and this hypothesis is debunked by all the subsequent documents), even then on the basis of the rest of them one can conclude that Demjanyuk did serve in pure extermination camp Sobibor, and also in Trawniki and Flossenbuerg. Since Demjanyuk denied having ever been in these camps, and concocted a false story about his whereabouts during the war, it can be concluded that probably he has something worse to hide. In any case, the image of a persecuted innocent person cannot be maintained.

Next >> Part 2

Demjanjuk returns to courtroom. This time his fight is with ex-supporter

Composed and walking slowly, John Demjanjuk went to court Monday in a bitter fight against one of his biggest supporters.

Jerome Brentar sued the family of the Seven Hills man for $2 million, seeking reimbursement for helping Demjanjuk's defense against allegations that he was a Nazi sentry.
[...]

The family now questions Brentar's motives, saying they believe he tried to further his agenda as a Holocaust revisionist, or a person who believes the Nazi atrocities against Jews didn't happen.

"Brentar's views are part of a larger anti-Semitic motive and movement," Boukis said in documents.

Boukis wants to present a great deal of evidence linking Brentar to the revisionist movement, which Brentar's attorney, Boyd, has fought. Judge Timothy McGinty said he would rule later in the trial. Brentar has said he is not anti-Semitic.

[Source]

Oh, the irony!

Former guard at extermination camp Sobibor, and also at Majdanek and Flossebuerg, Ivan Demjanyuk has long ago become the icon of the "revisionist" movement. I will write about denier arguments concerning his case later. For now - enjoy the hypocrisy. If D's family was so concerned about Holocaust deniers, why didn't they urge Jonny to tell the truth about Sobibor, Majdanek and Flossenbuerg, instead of denying that he ever was there?