Richard Rashke - Useful Enemies

“How many positive prints?”

“More than four.”

“Did you at any time turn over to the Soviet army, or any representative of the government… any of those photographs?”

“Never.”

O’Connor’s questions about the chain of events were meant to suggest that the KGB had either rifled through the mail or searched the home of Demjanjuk’s mother.

O’Connor next showed Demjanjuk a single photo. It was the same image as the middle picture of him on the triple photo display.

“And who is that?”

“That’s me.”

“When did you get that photograph?”

“My wife… brought the picture back to me from my mother.”

“Do you have any idea , Mr. Demjanjuk, how the Russians got that [same] picture?”

Angelilli cut O’Connor off. “I don’t want to hear that…. Please continue,” the judge said, indicating that he got the point the defense was trying to make and didn’t want to waste court time with repetition.

O’Connor showed Demjanjuk a second set of pictures that Martin had received from the Soviets after the denaturalization trial—three older men, each in civilian shirt and tie.

“Do you recognize any of those three men?”

“I can recognize my own picture,” Demjanjuk said.

“When was this picture taken?”

“At the time when I needed a picture for American citizenship.”

“Were you in the Soviet Union when you applied for American citizenship?”

“I was right here in Cleveland.”

“Did you mail a copy of that photograph to the Russians… or the KGB?”

“Never.”

“How did they get a picture of you from the United States?”

“Objection!” Einhorn said. “Calls for speculation.”

“I’m going to let him answer,” Angelilli ruled.

“I have no idea,” Demjanjuk said.

O’Connor next showed Demjanjuk a third set of photos the Soviets gave Martin—three men wearing Russian clothes.

“Have you ever seen any of those three… photographs before?”

“No,” Demjanjuk answered. “The middle picture is the same picture that is shown on the [Trawniki card] from the Soviet Union.”

“The men… on either side of that middle photograph—do you recognize any one of them?”

“No.”

“Would you have any idea how—for the judge, please—how the Russians would have gotten any of those three pictures?”

“I’m going to object, Your Honor,” Einhorn said.

“I’m going to allow the question,” Angelilli ruled.

“I don’t know anything,” Demjanjuk said.

The Soviets had also given Martin copies of two letters Demjanjuk had written in Cyrillic script, one to his mother and the other to his niece living in Ukraine. O’Connor asked Demjanjuk if he knew how the Soviets got copies of those two letters.

“I am aware that these documents came from the Soviet Union, but who made them?” Demjanjuk said in complete frustration. “I’m amazed that the court does not allow the use of the expression KGB when we’re all aware that it’s… the KGB who is behind making those documents.”

Next, O’Connor showed Demjanjuk an enlarged photo of the Trawniki card.

“There is writing on the left-hand portion of this photographic copy,” O’Connor said. “Would you look at this writing and indicate whether that’s in Cyrillic characters?”

O’Connor was referring to three letters of the alphabet written on the card in purple ink.

“Cyrillic,” Demjanjuk said.

“In the Russian language?”

“Yes.”

“I’m pointing now to three Cyrillic letters. Can you tell me what those letters are?”

“MVD,” Demjanjuk said.

“Do you have any idea… what those three letters stand for?”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Einhorn said. “I don’t see the relevance of this line of inquiry.”

“I’m going to let him answer,” Angelilli replied.

“This is the same as KGB,” Demjanjuk said.

The initials MVD stand for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a forerunner of the KGB, which was created in 1954.

“Is that Cyrillic writing in the center of this photograph?” O’Connor continued.

“Yes.”

“Can you read what that word is?”

“‘Demjanjuk.’”

“Is that your signature?”

“No.”

One of the government’s charges against Demjanjuk was that he was a member of Vlasov’s army recruited to fight against the Soviet army. The Soviets were U.S. allies at the time. O’Connor wanted to establish that even though Demjanjuk was in Vlasov’s army, he never fought the Russians.

“At the time you were in Oelberg [Heuberg], were you ever given a gun?” O’Connor asked.

“Twice,” Demjanjuk said.

Demjanjuk testified at the denaturalization trial that he was never issued a weapon at Heuberg.

“Did they ever give you ammunition for the gun?”

“Yes.”

“Did they indicate to you that you were going to get orders to go into battle?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who you were going to be fighting against?”

“The Russians,” Demjanjuk said.

“Did they ever tell you that you were going to be fighting the Americans or the British?”

“Only against the Russians.”

“Did you ever fire the weapon?”

“No, never.”

Finally, O’Connor called Demjanjuk’s son, John Jr., to the stand. The job of the eighteen-year-old college student was to argue hardship for himself and his mother if his father were deported to the Soviet Union.

“I know my father is an innocent man, an innocent victim of the KGB,” John Jr. began. “There is no other alternative [but] to continue our support…. If my father goes, I go…. I can’t just sit down, and let them take him away, and forget about it…. I am an anti-communist… my mother is an anti-communist. And I don’t trust the Russians. And I think that’s reason enough to consider it a hardship for me to go to the Soviet Union.”

The defense rested.

Once again, the life of John Demjanjuk was in the hands of a single American judge. Demjanjuk’s plea for asylum posed a tough question for Judge Angelilli, one that invited judicial bias. To the court, Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible as determined by Judge Battisti and upheld by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Assuming that Demjanjuk’s argument for asylum was cogent and persuasive, would Judge Angelilli offer the protection of the United States to a man whom the world considered inhumane and evil? Or would he conclude that John Demjanjuk must be deported to the Soviet Union to face possible criminal charges and possible execution if found guilty?

Demjanjuk had rolled the dice on asylum. They came up snake eyes. In his May 1984 decision, Judge Adolph Angelilli delivered fifteen pages of bad news to John Demjanjuk and his family. The entire deportation hearing, Angelilli began his ruling, centered around two interlocking questions. Is John Demjanjuk deportable? And if so, should the court grant him asylum?

Like Judge Battisti, Angelilli found the defense of John Demjanjuk to be a nondefense. “The Court considers that the crucial issues in these proceedings,” he wrote, “are the respondent’s behavior and activity… between 1941 and 1952 before he entered the United States. None of the witnesses was able to address those issues [or] could testify that they knew the respondent during the crucial years mentioned…. None of the witnesses satisfied this Court that they had anything to offer.”

On the other hand, Angelilli wrote, the evidence of record—the denaturalization trial and appeals court records—“satisfies this court that the respondent is deportable by evidence that is clear, convincing, and unequivocal.”