Richard Rashke - Useful Enemies

Martin held up a map. “It’s not on this map,” he said.

“What you are really saying is—you don’t know where it is, either, is that correct?”

“No, I couldn’t find it on this map.”

“The defendant said he was there as a prisoner of war about four to six months… and you don’t know where that is! None of us know where it is!”

No one could find the city on a map because they had misspelled it. The correct spelling was Heuberg , and it was in Germany, not Austria.

Martin continued his closing argument.

“If indeed this man had been a guard at Sobibor,” he said, “he would not have put Sobibor down [on his visa application] and put himself right next to this place.”

“You mean he made a mistake,” Battisti said.

“And certainly, if he had… committed all these crimes,” Martin argued, “he could have changed his name… a common practice.”

Finally, Martin made the same observation Judge Roettger had made in the Fedorenko case. One lone man had to defend himself against the combined resources of the USSR, the Israeli police, West German investigators, and the United States government.

“All these countries, these superpowers, have been brought together against this one man,” Martin argued.

Moscowitz answered the allegation.

“Your Honor, Mr. Martin is, indeed, correct that the government has expended many resources in this case, sought the help of many foreign governments…. The reason for this is, Your Honor, that thirty-five years ago, when this defendant sought the privilege of immigrating to this country, he lied about where he was during the war. If he told the truth then—even told what he tells today—this inquiry would have taken place thirty-five years ago… in Europe… when memories were fresher, when more people were alive.”

Why Fedorenko had no tattoo is open to speculation, Moscowitz argued. And his deposition contradicted his court trial testimony. Fedorenko swore in his deposition that he never saw a Kapo beat a Jew. He never saw an SS guard beat a Jew. He never even heard of an Iwan who ran the gas chambers.

“Mr. Fedorenko didn’t know much about anything,” Moscowitz said. “He saw no evil and heard no evil at Treblinka, and at this deposition, he would speak no evil of another Ukrainian.”

Moscowitz further argued that the origin and pursuit of the case against Demjanjuk was hardly secretive. The pretrial discovery period lasted at least two years , he pointed out. The defense had the names of the Demjanjuk investigators in the United States and in Israel. Mr. Martin could have deposed them at any time, or he could have submitted interrogatories.

Continuing the argument, Moscowitz returned to the Trawniki card.

“[Mr. Martin] mentions by the way, Your Honor, that it is easy to get an expert to come into the court to give an opinion about anything you want,” Moscowitz reminded Battisti. “It is easy apparently for anyone except Mr. Martin, who could get no expert that he was satisfied with, apparently, to come into court…..He never asked Mr. Epstein why he didn’t do the other tests…. The answer would have been: ‘They weren’t necessary.’… The defense has put on no evidence about the credibility of these cards. All he asks are further questions about them.”

Next, Moscowitz attempted to prove to the court why the Trawniki card could not have been a forgery.

“There are only two ways, Your Honor, this card can be phony,” he explained. “One is to make up the card from fresh in this KGB forgery factory, some place in Moscow that Pap was testifying about. Mr. Epstein indicated that is not possible. The signatures of Streibel and Teufel are genuine.

“The only other possibility is that you take a genuine card with Streibel’s and Teufel’s signature and you cross out all the information on someone else, and you stick in information about John Demjanjuk…. That is not possible because Mr. Epstein testified there was no tampering with the surface of the card.”

Moscowitz next addressed the height discrepancy issue. He pointed out that Demjanjuk testified that he was six feet, one inch tall. On his petition for naturalization, he said he was six feet even. The card says he was five feet, ten inches tall.

“A two-inch difference is hardly significant,” Moscowitz concluded.

Actually, the Trawniki card said Demjanjuk was five feet, eight inches tall, a four- to five-inch difference.

Finally, Moscowitz tried to buttress the prosecution’s weakest point—Demjanjuk’s service as an SS guard at Sobibor.

“Evidence strongly suggests that for some period of time—we can’t say how long or how short—he was at Sobibor,” Moscowitz argued.

He pointed out that Heinrich Schaefer testified that it was a common practice to transfer guards between death camps after they left Trawniki. Then he all but admitted that the government did not prove that Demjanjuk served at Sobibor. “To some extent, Your Honor, this is speculative… but it all fits together.”

Finally, Moscowitz tried to make the most of Demjanjuk’s claim on his visa application that he was a farmer in the village of Sobibor during the early war years.

“The defendant still hasn’t explained the odd coincidence—the extraordinary coincidence—that out of the thousands of hamlets, towns, big cities in Poland to hide,” Moscowitz argued, “he put down the poor, small, insignificant farming village of Sobibor—a place [near the death camp] where he contends he never was.”

The next but far from final word was Judge Frank Battisti’s. It would be a three-month wait.

The defense had tried to argue that the Trawniki card was tainted, tampered with, and forged. In his twenty-five-page ruling, issued on June 23, 1981, Judge Battisti dismissed that attempt in one sentence. “At no time during the entire course of the trial,” he ruled, “was any evidence introduced to substantiate these speculations.” Battisti then went on to analyze the government’s evidence for the authenticity of the card.

Battisti ruled that Wolfgang Schefler had proved without a doubt that the Trawniki card was historically accurate. Schefler’s testimony was corroborated by Heinrich Schaefer, the paymaster at Trawniki, who testified that the school issued ID cards to all its trainees, and that each trainee had had his photo taken in the summer of 1942, the year Demjanjuk arrived at the camp. Schaefer further identified as authentic the signatures of Karl Streibel, the camp commandant, and Ernst Teufel, the supply officer.

Battisti ruled that Gideon Epstein had proved without a doubt that the Trawniki card was authentic. Battisti pointed out that Epstein had performed a series of scientific tests both on the two photos of the card and on the original. Based on those tests, Epstein concluded that the signatures of Streibel and Teufel were authentic and that the card had not been tampered with and was not a forgery.

Battisti duly noted, but was not swayed by, the weaknesses in the government’s case for authenticity: The card lacked a date; both Schefler and Schaefer admitted they had never seen an ID card exactly like the one attributed to Demjanjuk; Epstein did not analyze the ink, paper, or typewriter type on the card; Epstein’s analysis of Demjanjuk’s signature was inconclusive; and Demjanjuk’s categorical denial that the signature on the card was his because two apostrophes were missing in the Cyrillic script, making the signature grammatically incorrect. None of these weaknesses, singly or taken as a group, created a serious doubt in Battisti’s mind.