John Demjanjuk, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

John Demjanjuk

Soviet soldier accused of World War II war crimes and retired auto worker

Date of Birth: 03-Apr-1920

Place of Birth: Dubovi Makharyntsi, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine

Date of Death: 17-Mar-2012

Profession: soldier, torturer, concentration camp guard

Nationality: United States, Ukraine

Zodiac Sign: Aries


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About John Demjanjuk

  • John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; Ukrainian: ???? ??????????? ???'????; 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out while serving as a guard at Nazi extermination camps during World War II.
  • Legal cases surrounding his participation in the Holocaust began during the 1970s and continued until his death in 2012.
  • During that time, Demjanjuk's trials attracted global media attention.Born in 1920 in Ukraine, Demjanjuk was conscripted into the Soviet Red Army in 1940.
  • He fought in World War II and was taken prisoner by the Germans in the Spring of 1942.
  • He served as a guard at the Sobibor extermination camp and at least two concentration camps.
  • In 1952, he emigrated from West Germany to the United States.
  • He took up residence in Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked in an auto factory until his retirement. In August 1977, Demjanjuk was accused of having been a Trawniki man, and based on eyewitness testimony by Holocaust survivors, he was identified as the notorious and savagely violent Treblinka extermination camp guard "Ivan the Terrible".
  • These accusations culminated in Demjanjuk's extradition to Israel in 1986.
  • In 1988, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death.
  • He maintained his innocence throughout the trial, claiming that it was a case of mistaken identity, and in 1993 the verdict was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court, based on new evidence that cast reasonable doubt over the identity of "Ivan the Terrible".
  • Although the judges agreed that there was sufficient evidence to show that Demjanjuk had served at Sobibor, Israel declined to prosecute, and in September 1993 Demjanjuk returned to Ohio. In 1999, US prosecutors again sought to deport Demjanjuk for having been a concentration camp guard, with his citizenship revoked in 2002.
  • In 2009, Germany requested his extradition for over 27,900 counts of acting as an accessory to murder: one for each person killed at Sobibor during the time he was alleged to have served as a guard there.
  • He was deported from the US to Germany in that same year.
  • On 12 May 2011, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.
  • According to historian Lawrence Douglas, in spite of the serious missteps along the way, the German verdict brought the case "to a worthy and just conclusion".
  • After the conviction, Demjanjuk was released pending appeal.
  • He lived at a German nursing home in Bad Feilnbach, where he died on 17 March 2012.
  • Having died before a final judgment on his appeal could be issued, by German law he is still presumed innocent.

Read more at Wikipedia

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