Richard Rashke - Useful Enemies

The man identified himself by name and produced his diplomatic identification badge. West German prosecutors wanted Mr. Demjanjuk to testify at a war crimes trial, the diplomat explained. They believed he had useful information about Sobibor and Treblinka.

Soon after that strange and troubling encounter, friends and neighbors began telling the Demjanjuks about being interviewed by INS investigators who wanted to know if Mr. Demjanjuk had ever talked about what he did during the war.

John Demjanjuk knew for sure he was a target in 1976, when the INS summoned him to its Cleveland office for questioning. And he knew the investigation was official when he opened a certified envelope from the Department of Justice on August 25, 1977. Inside the envelope was the government’s complaint, United States of America v. John Demjanjuk, a/k/a, Iwan Demjanjuk, a/k/a, Ivan Grozny (Ivan the Terrible).

Vera fainted. An ambulance took her to a hospital.

Like Frank Walus’s attorney, John Martin chose an alibi defense. Demjanjuk could not have been at Trawniki, Sobibor, and Treblinka when the government alleged he was, because he was a POW in a labor camp in Poland at the time. And later, he couldn’t have been a guard at any other camp or Nazi institution because the Germans had first sent him to Graz, Austria, to be inducted into an all-Ukrainian unit of the German army, then to a place called Oelberg, Austria, to be inducted into Vlasov’s liberation army.

Martin began the serious questioning of his client with the blood-type tattoo, which, the prosecution had argued, was proof that Demjanjuk worked for the SS. Since Demjanjuk’s command of English was minimal, the court provided an interpreter.

“While you were at Graz, did you have occasion to receive a blood-grouping type tattoo?” Martin asked.

“Yes.”

“Would you point to where this was placed on your body?”

Demjanjuk pointed to the inside of his upper left arm.

“This was done at Graz by whom?”

“A doctor.”

“Did the other POWs taken to Graz receive this tattoo also?”

“Everyone,” Demjanjuk said.

Danilchenko had sworn in his statement taken by Soviet prosecutor Natalia Kolesnikova that he and Demjanjuk were tattooed while doing guard duty in Flossenbürg, Germany. Martin’s argument: Yes, my client had the tattoo—not because he was an SS guard, but because he was an involuntary soldier in Vlasov’s liberation army.

“After Graz, could you tell us where you were taken?”

“We were loaded onto railroad cars and shipped to Oelberg,” Demjanjuk said.

“When you arrived at Oelberg, what was there?”

“The Russian army had been organized there.”

“What if anything did you do there?”

“We didn’t do anything there,” Demjanjuk said. “We were waiting for uniforms and shoes which we never got…. Those soldiers who had uniforms were sent to Bohemia, and the rest of us—who had only the old Italian uniforms—were sent with one officer to Bischofshofen [Austria].”

“Do you recall when?”

“This was 1945.”

“And from Bischofshofen where were you taken or where did you go?”

“We stayed there at a prisoner of war camp which had been vacated,” Demjanjuk said. “And then the Americans came and took us to Munich.”

Martin established two major defense points in that exchange with his client. First, if Demjanjuk was at Graz and Oelberg, he could not have been at Flossenbürg and Regensburg as Danilchenko alleged. And second, he never actually fought against the United States or against any of its allies. Membership in Vlasov’s army did not, in and of itself, make Demjanjuk ineligible for a U.S. visa.

Next, Martin began discrediting previous witness testimony that John Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible.

“Presently, how tall are you?” Martin asked.

“Six feet, one inch.”

Most of the witnesses had testified that Ivan the Terrible was shorter. And the Trawniki card described Iwan Demjanjuk as around five feet, eight inches tall.

“Calling your attention to 1942, 1943, were you the same height?” Martin asked.

“Possibly.”

“What color were your eyes in 1942, 1943?”

“Blue.”

The Trawniki card, and each witness who was asked that question, said Ivan the Terrible’s eyes were gray.

“What color was your hair?”

“Light blond.”

Each witness had described Ivan the Terrible’s hair as dark to black.

“Was your hair long or short?”

“Long,” Demjanjuk said.

Each witness had described Ivan the Terrible’s hair as short.

“During the time you were a prisoner of war… to the end of the war, were you ever given a haircut?” Martin asked.

“No.”

“At any time during the war years, were you in any concentration camp where civilian population were kept?”

“No,” Demjanjuk said, in effect denying that he was ever a guard at any German-run camp.

Martin showed Demjanjuk the two certified photos of the Trawniki card.

“Have you ever during the war years been issued documents similar to this?” he asked.

“Never.”

“Is that a photograph of you?”

“I cannot say. Possibly it is me.”

“Why can’t you be sure?”

“Because I never had such hair as the man in the photograph except in the Russian army,” Demjanjuk said.

“The uniform in this photograph… Did you have such a uniform at any time that you were a POW?”

“No.”

“The Italian uniform that you were given, what color was that?”

“Green.”

Martin couldn’t prove that the photo on the Trawniki card came from the files of the KGB. The best he could do was to suggest it.

“Did you learn after arriving in the United States that your mother was receiving a pension from the army?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because they told her that I was missing in action and gave her a pension,” Demjanjuk said.

“Did there come a time that your mother had the pension stopped?”

“When my mother learned that I was still alive, she went and turned down the pension.”

Martin showed Demjanjuk a copy of the article, “Punishment Will Come,” published in News from Ukraine in September 1977. The paper featured two photos of the Trawniki card with the alleged picture of Demjanjuk.

“Have you seen this before?”

“Yes.”

“At your home?”

“Someone sent it to us… in the mail.”

“Was this the first time you had seen photos of this kind?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where that paper is from?”

“From Ukraine.”

Martin moved on to the reason why Demjanjuk did not reveal to the IRO, the Displaced Persons Commission, and the U.S. vice consul that he had been a POW and a soldier in Vlasov’s army.

“During the times you were in the camps… did you have a fear of being forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union?”

“Yes—’45, ’46, ’47 were the most terrible years,” Demjanjuk said.

“After ’47 did you fear being repatriated to the Soviet Union?”

“There was fear, but it wasn’t as bad as before,” Demjanjuk admitted. “Soviet officers weren’t going around anymore.”

“Would you tell us why you were afraid of being repatriated to the Soviet Union?”

“Because I had been a soldier of the Red Army and there was a regulation that if you were going to be taken prisoner of war, you had to shoot yourself, and I hadn’t done so,” Demjanjuk said.

“Was it out of this fear that you made certain misrepresentations on your IRO application and visa application?”

“Yes.”

Horrigan conducted the cross-examination of Demjanjuk. The prosecutor showed him a copy of his original 1951 visa application. Demjanjuk said he didn’t recognize it. Horrigan began to review some of the information on the form.