The souls and families of  thousands of Jews murdered in the Holocaust can rest a little easier.  John Demjanjuk  has gone from an accused to a convicted Nazi War Criminal.  Pending a certain appeal, the end to a saga that has lasted over twenty-five years has come full circle.

A saga that spanned the globe from the Gates of the Sobibor Concentration Camp in Poland,  to Cleveland, Ohio to Israel and finally back where it all started in Germany has finally ended with Demjanjuk’s conviction as an accessory to the murder of 28,000 Jews at the Sobibor Concentration camp.

There are those who will claim that Demjanjuk was simply a dupe and scapegoat to hold any possible person accountable for the Naz’s horrendous crimes against humanity.  There will those will claim that he is a wrongly accused old man, the victim of a government conspiracy.   There will those who will claim that regardless of his crimes, he is simply too old and close to death regardless, so we should leave him be.  If it makes that contingent feel any better, An appeals court may very well reverse his conviction. Demjanjuk will probably not do any time because of his age. It really does not matter.  The wheels of justice have finally turned.  The statement that has been made time and time again by those pursuing the perpetrators of genocide has been reaffirmed. You can not hide behind the passage of time.  The world has listened in to a the recounting of an event in time that within 5-10 years  there will be no one left to tell the story.  It will be relegated to history books that for the most part give relatively short shrift to this pivotal moment in human history.  John Demjanjuk’s role and conviction will be an official part of that history. The course of human history changed by the murdering of the future.

In the end,  John Demjanjuk will still have lived a the full life of family, friends and a full stomach that he helped deny to thousands of Jews. This is 2011, not 1945.  Lucky for him. 

It looks like accused war criminal John Demjanjuk will be forced to face his alleged Nazi Concentration Camp past in the name of Alexander Nagorny, a former concentration camp guard who will testify that he not only worked with Demjanjuk in a camp but lived with him for a period of time.

Should Demjanjuk be found healthy enough to stand trial, Nagorny will be a key witness against the 89-year-old Demjanjuk.  He will testify that he worked with Demjanjuk at a concentration camp in Flossenburg, Germany, and lived with him after the war in Landshut, a Bavarian city near Munich.  While he does not put Demjanjuk at Sobibor, if believed it is a severe blow to Demjanjuk’s case as he has steadfastly claimed he is the victim of mistaken identity and was never a concentration camp guard.  The fact that Nagorny lived with Demjanjuk makes his testimony uniquely powerful and unlike others in similar trials who claimed that they served with or only saw a particular guard in a camp. This type of testimony  could often be discredited based on the combination of brief interactions, mistaken identity and passage of time.  His testimony is also crucial because if believed it ties Demjanjuk to a specific concentration camp guard I.D number. That same number places Demjanjuk at Sobibor, the camp in which he is accused of committing war crimes.

Like Demjanjuk, Nagorny is old and very ill.  If his health renders him unavailable to testify at trial, his testimony at a preliminary hearing will be admissible.

In a case of life imitating art, the new witness also rings eerily similar to the movie Music Box which is loosely based on the Demjanjuk saga.  In that movie,  the character, “Mike Laszlo” played by Armand Muller Stahl is accused of being the  war criminal “Mishka” who murdered Jews  as part of the Hungarian “Arrow Cross” death squads.  Like Demjanjuk ,he claimed mistaken identity.

Now we have another piece coming into play.  In Music Box, a witness, “Pal Horvath” came forward claiming  he had served with Mishka and identified that person as Mike Laslow.   He, like Nagorny was old and in failing health.  It turned out however that he had previously given affidavits identifying two other individuals as Mishka. His testimony was discredited and ruled inadmissible. Michael Laslow went free.(it was a deportation hearing, not a criminal hearing).  In the end it turned out that Laslow was in fact the war criminal Mishka.

Is Alexander Nagorny a real life “Pal Horvath“?   Is John Demjanjuk a real life Mishka?  I hope his health improves enough for us to find out.

Whatever tune comes out of this real life  “Music Box”, it is a song that needs to be heard.

John Demjanjuk, 88 has managed to escape his alleged Nazi past for over 60 years. He has lived a quiet life in suburban Cleveland fighting United States Justice Department efforts to deport him. He has beaten an Israeli death sentence. He had his United States citizenship revoked in 1981, restored in 1998 and then revoked again in 2002 based on Justice Department evidence showing he concealed his service at Sobibor and other Nazi-run death and forced labor camps. A movie has been made loosely based on his saga.

In the non-Hollywood real world, Germany has issued a warrant for Demjanjuk’s arrest. German prosecutors claim Demjanjuk was an accessory to some 29,000 deaths during World War II as a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Demjanjuk has now temporarily beaten back a final deportation order to Germany(an immigration judge ruled in 2005 he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine) with six U.S. Customs agents standing right on his door step of his suburban Cleveland home, wheel chair in hand(literally) with a wheel chair accessible van, ready to escort him to the airport in Cleveland for a forced and unwanted journey into his Nazi past. Demjanjuk claims that he is unable to travel due to his poor health and that any deportation under such circumstances would constitute cruel  would amount to torture.

The Demjanjuk citizenship and deportation odyssey began in Israel. He was originally sentenced to death in Israel, convicted of being the Nazi death camp guard “Ivan the Terrible”. The Israeli Supreme Court later overturned the conviction, saying another man was probably “Ivan,” a sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp where 870,000 people died. He then returned to the United States and had his citizenship restored.

Demjanjuk was stripped of his U.S. citizenship again in 2002, with a judge ruled that he had worked as a guard at other death camps. Because no country was willing to take him and it is unconstitutional to incarcerate him, he as been able to live quietly in his Cleveland home.

As to the stripping of his citizenship and aggressive deportation stance taken by the Justice Department, Edward Nishnic, a spokesman for Demjanjuk’s family once stated:

“This is taking it to the ridiculous……. It’s another form of harassment against a very and very frail man.”

Nishnic said the family was relieved the stay was granted.

“We’re delighted. We’re prepared to make our arguments with the 6th Circuit, and it’s just a shame that Mr. Demjanjuk had to go through the hell that he went through once again this morning,”

His wife Vera had previously old told a German newspaper:

“His brain is not functioning correctly. One day he recognizes everything, the next day he has forgotten it all. He goes to the doctor for injections once a week, otherwise he wouldn’t be around much longer.”

The U.S. attorney general’s office has filed a response to Demjanjuk’s 6th Circuit motions, saying the court does not have the authority to rule on a previous denial for a stay by the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals.

“Because there is no reviewable final order of removal, this court lacks jurisdiction,” the government said. “Simply put, this court does not have the statutory authority to entertain his request and related motion.”

In addition to his cruel and unusual argument, Demjanjuk has consistently maintained that he is a victim of mistaken identity and wrongly targeted in a two decade vendetta by the United States Justice Department.

It is notable that one of the claims that was upheld in restoring his citizenship in 1998 was that the Justice Department withheld evidence. This sounds disturbingly similar to current allegations of misconduct within the Justice Department in several ongoing cases, the most notable being former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. These current allegations may work in his favor in the background if there is any benefit of doubt to be given him by the 6th Circuit.

Should John Demjanjuk be deported to Germany to face trial for his crimes? I say yes. If there is to be mercy based on age and health for Mr. Demjanjuk, it is for a German court and the citizens of the nation where he stands accused to decide. There is a valid extradition order. There is a valid deportation order. There is a treaty in place. That is how it works. It is time for John Demjanjuk to go home and face his past.

You can read an actual pleading from the case that contains an excellent summary of the facts and some of Demjanjuk’s arguments here.

I will also post all ongoing pleadings in the case here as they are made available. Be sure to also take the poll on my site.

** Order Of Stay Issued By The Sixth Circuit Court Of Appeal(added 4-16-09)