Richard Rashke - Useful Enemies

“I’m going to have to support the objection,” Judge Angelilli ruled. “This man—not having been qualified to be an expert—can make no finding as to what the document says or doesn’t say, or whether the printing is correct or incorrect.”

Angelilli’s decision was a serious blow to the Demjanjuk defense. Reiss was its only “document expert.” Denied expert status, Reiss could add little except to deny that Trawniki ever issued ID cards to its Trawniki men. As a cashier, Reiss testified, he checked “dog tags” for identification before paying salaries, not a card of any kind, once again suggesting that the Trawniki card allegedly issued to Demjanjuk was a forgery.

Like Gill, Einhorn had gone to Hamburg to cross-examine Reiss. The court now watched that segment of the videotape. Einhorn’s strategy was to completely destroy Reiss’s credibility as an expert witness and to portray him as biased.

“Are you a professionally trained or licensed document examiner?” Einhorn asked.

“No.”

“Have you done any postgraduate work in history?”

“I did not study history at a university,” Reiss said.

“Are you a professional printer?”

“No.”

“Do you read or speak Russian fluently?” Einhorn asked.

“No.”

“Ukrainian?”

“No.”

Einhorn pointed to the two photos of the card. “Would your opinion [of the card] change,” he asked, “if you knew that a West German historian and an American document examiner had reviewed these copies, and the originals, and determined them to be authentic?”

“No.”

Einhorn then got Reiss to admit that he had been a member of a Death’s Head (Totenkopf) unit of the Waffen SS, whose insignia was a skull superimposed on crossbones. The Order of the Death’s Head was responsible for the administration of the death camps and its members had been defined as inimical to the United States.

“During your participation in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, isn’t it true that SS Einsatzkommandos followed your unit into the Soviet Union and engaged in the wholesale killing of unarmed Jews?” Einhorn asked.

“I don’t know whether that actually happened,” Reiss said.

“Did you pass through a town [in Latvia] called Daugavpils?”

“We went through the city to get to the front.”

“Then you are aware, are you not, that the SS executed en masse the unarmed Jews of that city?”

“I don’t know that,” Reiss said.

“Do you know that in the official report of an SS Brigadefuehrer [brigadier general] [Jürgen] Stroop, it was reported that Trawniki men were used to suppress the Jewish uprising of Warsaw between April and May 1943?”

“I don’t know because I have not seen it,” Reiss said.

“Do you know this information from any other source?”

“No.”

“Are you aware that Trawniki men guarded prisoners—people, human beings—in the work camp of Trawniki?”

“No.”

“Are you aware that guards… trained at Trawniki, were sent to work at the SS death camps of Treblinka, Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Belzec?”

“I know that Wachmänner went to these places, but without knowing what they were.”

“When you joined the Death’s Head organization—the Totenkopf Division—were you given training?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Are you aware of the SS training manual [that states] that the German nation, led by the Fuehrer and his SS, would not regard the Jewish danger lightly, nor rest as long as a Jew lived in the world?”

“Never.”

After a break in the videotape, Michael Wolf took over the cross-examination.

“Do you know what occurred at the Treblinka camp?” Wolf asked.

“Later, I heard of it.”

“How much later?”

“After the end of the war,” Reiss said.

“Is it true that Trawniki men were assigned to work at the Treblinka camp?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever hear who worked as guards at the camp?”

“No.”

Like Fedorenko before him, Reiss apparently heard little and saw nothing.

The defense was having a rotten day. The government had virtually destroyed its witnesses during cross-examination. O’Connor had planned to call three more to the stand to help repair some of the damage. But because none of them knew anything directly or personally about Demjanjuk, their testimony would be hearsay evidence. Judge Angelilli refused to admit them. That left O’Connor little choice. He called John Demjanjuk back to the stand.

O’Connor handed Demjanjuk a photograph of the Trawniki card. “Mr. Demjanjuk, would you take a look at this KGB document , please.”

“I object to the characterization,” Einhorn said.

“Overruled.”

“In the upper… left-hand portion at the top, there is a photograph alleged to have been on a card that exists someplace in Russia. Have you ever seen the original card? Ever?”

“Never,” Demjanjuk said.

O’Connor continued. “Looking at this KGB evidence—”

“Same objection, Your Honor.”

“Mr. O’Connor, please!” Angelilli chided. “I expect that you act professional. You will identify it as ‘my exhibit No. 6’ hereafter. And to the recorder, I want you to strike, in every instance, any remark about Exhibit 6…. Now proceed.”

“May the record now reflect,” O’Connor said, “that the judge has given the court recorder the responsibility to decide what is derogatory.”

Angelilli let the comment pass. It was obvious that O’Connor was already preparing his appeal.

“Mr. Demjanjuk, is that your picture?” O’Connor asked, as John Martin had asked during the denaturalization trial.

“I don’t know,” Demjanjuk said, repeating what he had said during the trial.

“Either it is your picture or it’s not your picture.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Einhorn interrupted. “Counsel is abusing his own witness.”

“Sustained.”

“Could that picture of you have been taken when you were in the Soviet army?” O’Connor continued, suggesting that the KGB had removed an original photo from the Trawniki card and substituted an old army picture of Iwan Demjanjuk.

“I’m not able to tell,” Demjanjuk said. The man on the card had hair. The Red Army shaved the heads of its recruits. “I don’t even remember whether a picture was taken at the time of induction into the Red Army.”

“May the record reflect I’m now showing the witness a photo album that the Russians presented to the respondent’s attorney, Mr. Martin, after the denaturalization hearing…. Three photographs of individuals in military uniforms with caps.”

Soviet prosecutors had shown those same three photos to Danilchenko and other former Trawniki men to see if they could identify Demjanjuk. There is no doubt the pictures came from a KGB file.

“Do you recognize any of those three men?” O’Connor asked.

“One is a picture of me. Two are my friends.”

“Friends from when?”

“From the time when we all were inducted,” Demjanjuk said.

“Where is your picture?”

“In the middle.”

“Do you remember when that picture was taken?”

“In 1941. I went to a photographer,” Demjanjuk said. “All three of us went together.”

“Did your military unit request you to get that photograph?”

“No. We had the pictures taken so that we could send them to our parents.”

“Did you send that picture to your parents?”

“Yes. All three of us,” Demjanjuk said. “We wrote letters together and we mailed the letters together.”