John Demjanjuk
- Original name:
- Ivan Demjanjuk
- Died:
- March 17, 2012, Bad Feilnbach, Germany (aged 91)
- Role In:
- Holocaust
- World War II
- On the Web:
- Yad Vashem - John Iwan Demjanjuk (PDF) (Dec. 21, 2024)
John Demjanjuk (born April 3, 1920, Makharintsy, Ukraine, U.S.S.R.—died March 17, 2012, Bad Feilnbach, Germany) was a Ukrainian-born autoworker who was accused of being a Nazi camp guard during World War II.
Demjanjuk served in the Soviet army during World War II. In 1942 he was captured by Germany and was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp. After the war, he moved to the United States in 1952 and became an American citizen in 1958. He eventually settled in Ohio, where he worked at an automobile factory.
In the 1970s Demjanjuk was investigated by U.S. officials after Holocaust survivors identified him as “Ivan the Terrible,” a Nazi guard who operated the gas chambers at the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. In 1981 a U.S. court revoked his citizenship. Five years later he was extradited to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. Prosecutors alleged that Demjanjuk, after becoming a prisoner of war, had volunteered to serve as a concentration camp guard and later worked at Treblinka, where his cruelty earned him the nickname Ivan the Terrible. He denied the allegations, but in 1988 he was found guilty and sentenced to hang. In 1993, however, the Israeli Supreme Court overruled the decision, based on evidence that another man was Ivan the Terrible.
Demjanjuk returned to the United States in 1993, and his citizenship was restored in 1998. His legal struggles continued, however. In 2002 a federal judge determined that he had worked as a Nazi camp guard, and Demjanjuk was again stripped of his U.S. citizenship. Three years later he was ordered to be deported to Germany, Poland, or Ukraine. Demjanjuk appealed the decision, but it was upheld. In 2009 a Munich court charged him as being an accessory in the murder of some 28,000 Jews at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, and Germany requested his extradition. After the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his last appeal, Demjanjuk was deported in May 2009. Three months later Demjanjuk, who had health issues, was deemed fit to stand trial. His trial began in November 2009, and in May 2011 he was convicted and sentenced to a five-year prison term. While awaiting an appeal, Demjanjuk was released to a nursing home, where he died in March 2012.