Richard Rashke - Useful Enemies

August: Collaborator Tscherim Soobzokov is assassinated by a pipe bomb.

December: Former Nazi guard Ignat Danilchenko dies.

January: Demjanjuk leaves for Israel.

November: Demjanjuk trial opens in Jerusalem.

April: Demjanjuk is convicted and sentenced to death.

December: Defense attorney Dov Eitan commits suicide or is murdered. Yoram Sheftel is attacked with acid.

July: First major Dumpster papers are retrieved.

February: Maria Dudek identifies Iwan Marchenko as Ivan the Terrible during a 60 Minutes interview taped in Poland.

March: Demjanjuk defense learns about the Fedorenko papers filed in Crimea, which identify Iwan Marchenko as Ivan the Terrible.

May: Sheftel argues Demjanjuk appeal before the Israeli Supreme Court.

June: Prosecution in Israel releases the Fedorenko files identifying Iwan Marchenko as Ivan the Terrible.

December: Soviet Union collapses.

June: U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agrees to reopen the Demjanjuk denaturalization case and appoints a special master.

July: Israeli Supreme Court acquits Demjanjuk.

August: U.S. Sixth Circuit court rules that Demjanjuk can return to the United States. Israeli Supreme Court decides not to retry Demjanjuk as Iwan of Sobibor.

November: U.S. Sixth Circuit court finds OSI guilty of prosecutorial misconduct and fraud upon the court and restores Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship.

May: Justice Department files a new complaint against Demjanjuk as an SS guard at Sobibor.

May: Second Demjanjuk denaturalization trial opens in Cleveland. U.S. Sixth Circuit court strips Demjanjuk of his citizenship a second time.

December: U.S. immigration judge orders Demjanjuk deported to Germany, Poland, or Ukraine.

May: Demjanjuk leaves for Munich to stand trial as Iwan of Sobibor.

November: Munich trial opens.

May: Munich court finds Demjanjuk guilty of assisting in the murder of 29,060 Jews at Sobibor and sentences him to five years in prison. Demjanjuk files an appeal.

March: Demjanjuk dies in a nursing home in Germany.

Much of this book is based on transcripts of trials and hearings. These transcripts are unedited and contain spelling and grammatical errors that appear to be made either by the translator or the transcriber. They also contain inconsistencies in the spelling of names. I have corrected these obvious errors without changing the content of the testimony in any way. The italics in transcript quotations are mine.

The spelling of Eastern European names and places poses a problem. Sometimes, there are several spelling variations for a word. For example, a Ukrainian name will have a Ukrainian spelling, a Russian spelling, and sometimes a Polish spelling. The name of a city or town can have four different variations if one adds the German name for the location. Whenever possible, I have chosen the spelling relevant to the country of origin.

The term “Eastern European,” frequently used in this book, encompasses all states once under Soviet influence: Belorussia (today Belarus), Bulgaria, the former Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.

Numbers are a problem. Older sources tend to have larger numbers. More recent sources tend to have smaller numbers based on the latest research. For some numbers, there is no factual base, making them little more than guesses. As scholars find more archival documents, these numbers will continue to be refined. Unless a number is commonly accepted, I have documented the number used, usually presenting it in a sliding scale such as “an estimated three to four million.”

AP Associated Press

CP Cleveland Post

CPD Cleveland Plain Dealer

CSM Christian Science Monitor

CT Chicago Tribune

DFP Detroit Free Press

JP Jerusalem Post

LAT Los Angeles Times

MH Miami Herald

NA U.S. National Archives, College Park, Maryland

NYT New York Times

RG Record Group

WP Washington Post

WSJ Wall Street Journal

Berkhoff, Karel C. Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.

The Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Toronto: Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 2001. Gottlieb, Mark. “The Hunt for Ivan the Terrible.” Cleveland Magazine, November 1979.

Hryshko, Vasyl. The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1933. Edited and translated by Marco Carynnyk. Toronto: Bahriany Foundation, 1983. Magosci, Paul Robert. A History of Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.

Transcripts of Demjanjuk’s Denaturalization Trial in Cleveland in 1981, Deportation Hearing in Cleveland in 1983–84, and Israeli Trial in Jerusalem in 1986.

This chapter makes no attempt to point out the slightly different versions of and contradictions in Demjanjuk’s own story. They will be dealt with in subsequent chapters.

xi Helped the Nazis murder 29,060 Jews: The number is an estimate taken from the railroad records of Jews transported to Sobibor during the time Demjanjuk worked there as a guard.

xii Estimates for the number of Ukrainians that Stalin starved to death in the Great Famine range from one million to ten million. The three to four million number comes from The Encyclopedia of Ukraine.

xii Besides Ukraine, the countries that have recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide include: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, and the United States.

xii “You could see each”: Hryshko, 96.

xiii Estimated 3.3 million: Three to four million purged by Stalin is the number generally accepted by scholars.

xiii Over 160,000 Red Army: This figure comes from German reports on the battle.

xiii Soviet military law required Iwan to kill himself: This was Demjanjuk’s testimony in every trial and hearing. For example, in the 1981 denaturalization trial he said: “I had been a soldier in the Red Army and there was a regulation that if you were going to be taken prisoner, you had to shoot yourself.”

xiv During the winter of 1941–42, an estimated two million”: Berkhoff, 89.

xvii According to Gottlieb: The Demjanjuk family’s American sponsor was Donald Coulter; the last name of the Polish family in Indiana was Underwood; and the last name of family friends in Cleveland was Lishchuk.

Adams, Walter. “Extent and Nature of the World Refugee Problem.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May 1939.

Birnbaum, Ervin. “Evian: The Most Fateful Conference of All Time.” Nativ: A Journal of Politics and the Arts, February 2009.

Black, Conrad. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom. New York: Public Affairs, 2003.

Brecher, Frank. Reluctant Ally: U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Jews from Wilson to Roosevelt. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.

Breitman, Richard, and Alan Kraut. American Refugee Policy and European Jewry 1933–1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.