Original subtitles

John Demjanjuk was deported from the United States

after he was accused of being the sadistic Nazi guard

known as Ivan the Terrible.

Today he begins testifying in his own defense.

You'll recall the emotional testimony

of both Pinchas Epstein and Eliahu Rosenberg,

the two Treblinka prisoners

who pointed their finger at Demjanjuk earlier in the trial

and positively identified him as Ivan the Terrible.

I hope to hear him.

The lies.

Rosenberg says he wants to hear what he calls Demjanjuk's lies

directly from the lips of the man he says is the demon of Treblinka.

Please state your name.

Honorable court,

my name is John Demjanjuk.

It's important you remember,

when you answer the questions of the court,

you must tell the truth, the whole truth,

and nothing but the truth.

Yes.

Your Honors, it was very painful for me

to sit here and hear the terrible tragedy

that befell the Jewish people because of Nazism.

It's a very, very sad tragedy,

and I hope that they have all reached Heaven.

But that butcher was not I, Ivan Demjanjuk.

And I have no doubt in my heart.

My heart is pure.

I am innocent.

Demjanjuk chose the best defense that one can choose.

His defense is, "I was not here, not here, not here."

I was a POW."

How can you find any... How can you break such an alibi?

I was a victim of the war.

So why would you put me on trial?

One of the best investigations of Demjanjuk

was the very first one...

that was done by simple...

investigators of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

They knock on the door...

and they come into his living room, and they sit with him.

And then they take an interview with him of what he did during the war.

Investigator Rusak asked you:

"Have you ever been to the towns..."

Kosov or Miedzyrtztk-Kodalsky?

And your answer...

"You are pushing me to Treblinka."

How would you know about a small, little town

that's very near to Treblinka?

A town of no significance whatsoever.

How would you know?

Why was your answer

that you were being pushed towards Treblinka?

If there was a question regarding it, I always said

I was never in Treblinka.

I don't remember saying Treblinka. At that time, I was in Chelm.

I don't believe him. I don't believe him.

By the time he got to Jerusalem,

he had learned the movement of Ukrainians,

what happened with them.

He knew from his own experience what happened.

Demjanjuk slowly learned his alibi and what he should say.

You were accused that, in 1942,

you were in the extermination camp in Treblinka.

You say that you were not there.

They keep accusing me of being at Treblinka.

My heart goes out for your people.

Never in my life was I at Treblinka

or at Sobibor, nor at Trawniki.

The amazing fact,

when Demjanjuk wanted to immigrate to the United States,

and he had to fill out the visa application,

there was a place where he had to describe what did he do during the wartime.

And he wrote there, with his own handwriting,

that he was at a place in Poland called Sobibor.

Now, this is a fingerprint

that the criminal leaves in the scene of crime.

I mean, there were five camps

that the German government set up

solely to exterminate human beings, Jews.

And Sobibor was one of them.

Human beings were transformed

from flesh and bone to...

ash...

within hours of their arrival.

It was a death factory.

So, when one sees that US visa application

and sees that word, "Sobibor,"

a chill goes up the spine.

Isn't it a very strange coincidence

that in the Trawniki card

that you claim you never saw...

is written "Sobibor"?

And also on your US immigration form, it's written "Sobibor."

Do you think I would have given that name

if I had been in Sobibor?

I would never do such a thing!

Demjanjuk gave these versions of his alibi defense,

which changed every time he told it, pretty much.

I said I've been to Sobibor,

and that's where I worked on a farm.

This breaks, of course,

his alibi...

into pieces.

And it puts him, first of all,

in this scheme

of, uh, of the extermination of the Jews.

I keep getting into trouble

because I didn't pay attention remembering my past.

I didn't know it would get me into trouble.

As far as I'm concerned, he would not testify.

He's a... a very simple,

unsophisticated person,

and he can easily put in trouble by any...

um...

you know, high quality prosecutor.

Uh, and it was out of the question that the court will believe him.

I mean, we'll prefer his testimony to the survivors'?

I mean, it's a joke.

We were put into stables.

We were called to the doctor for examination,

and there, our blood was typed.

I don't understand your previous sentence.

What do you mean, you had your blood groups typed?

The SS tattoo was a blood type tattoo

that was used by the SS.

He admitted that he had placed the SS tattoo...

under his armpit.

There was really no way we would have known that...

had he not volunteered that.

As I said before, blood was taken from the finger.

After the blood was typed,

it was tattooed on the arm.

Not all SS criminals had it.

And this is, really, the special unit of the Totenkopf of the SS.

They were the only one who had such a tattoo under their armpit.

Nobody forced him to do it.

It was voluntary.

He went out of his way,

in one way or another,

to belong to this... uh...

to this unit.

When did you take the tattoo off?

I began removing it when I found out

the SS division had the same tattoo.

All of these elements combined create a definitive image.

The accused claims: "I was elsewhere."

We say to him, "You're not telling the truth."

You were at Treblinka.

I wish to say one thing only.

I am not the gas chamber operator of Treblinka

who persecuted your innocent people.

I am not the man the prisoners called "Ivan the Terrible."

Please don't commit this vicious act

and put the noose around my neck

for somebody else's crimes.

On April 18th, it will be the real thing:

the culmination of a year's worth of tales of torture and death.

The three judges will now review the evidence

and reach their final verdict,

exonerating John Demjanjuk of the crimes committed by Ivan the Terrible

or finding him guilty of the brutal murder of 870,000 Jews.

I just know one thing, one way or the another one,

I'm a hero. That's all.

- A hero? - That's right.

- Even if you don't... If... - Even if they hang me, I am a hero,

because nobody have a court like so many... so many year like I am.

Even no big Nazi.

And I am not Nazi.

I'm Ukrainian.

- Even if they'll hang you? - I'm full Ukrainian.

Even if they'll hang you, you're a hero?

Yeah.

As many people here in Jerusalem

who have been following this case can relate,

it's almost like it's, up until this day,

a soap opera unfolding.

The tales have been so horrendous,

it's been absolutely difficult to comprehend.

Today, it's time for the verdict.

The family were... was full of hope... natural.

I told them that I hope the court will come to its senses.

And will not convict your father

based on such a flawed evidence.

This is how Demjanjuk, still officially a defendant,

arrived today at the courtroom in Jerusalem.

Crying and complaining about severe back pain,

carried by four police officers into the courtroom.

The end.

It was a very difficult decision.

We were not adjudicating the Nazis or the horrors.

We were deliberating whether this man committed those crimes.

If it was a mistaken identity, then he didn't commit those crimes.

We'd be committing a terrible crime by killing an innocent man.

I'm opposed to the death penalty. I was conflicted about it.

If there were doubts, then he shouldn't be sentenced.

But this was a man who, in all likelihood, committed these crimes,

and he could be sent home?

It's cruel, but it is the law.

I had sleepless nights.

The responsibility was there.

This is a living person.

He might die.

And yet, you are preoccupied with what you do,

and you don't hear all these noises around you.

All rise!

Good morning. Please be seated.

Criminal case 373/86,

State of Israel v. Ivan John Demjanjuk.

The verdict.

Before us is a horrible and shocking indictment.

Its words are burning, and its story is raising terror.

It is the terrible and bitter truth that we are asked to uncover

in order to determine whether the accused

took part in these crimes.

The conflicting arguments that are present in our case

require a swift and determined answer

that will not leave place to reasonable doubt.

Written evidence, papers, documents,

are not enough to reach a definitive conclusion in this case.

For that reason,

we're required to use the testimonies of the remnants of the fire,

survivors who have seen the perpetrators in the death factory of Treblinka.

But, it should be said, it is important to listen to their words

and analyze their credibility.

If their testimony is not influenced by wishes of the heart,

failed memory, or an innocent mistake of identity.

One may ask: Is it possible to remember

and portray accurately what had happened so long ago?

Forty-five years ago and more?

One may ask: "How can one forget?"

How can someone surviving the death fields,

the daily killings and humiliation, the abuse...

How can they forget?

According to the said above,

we convict the accused with crimes against the Jewish people,

according to Israeli law 1A1: Nazi and collaborators crimes law, 1950.

Crimes against humanity, according to law 1A2.

War Crimes, according to law 1A3.

And crimes against prosecuted people...

My learned colleague, Judge Tal, will read out the sentence.

Sentence:

What punishment should be imposed on Ivan the Terrible?

Who, with his very own hands, killed tens of thousands.

Humiliated, degraded, victimized, and brutalized,

and persecuted innocent human beings zealously.

Therefore...

it is for this reason that we sentence him for the aforementioned crimes.

The punishment of death as stipulated

in Section 1 of the Nazi and Nazi collaborators law.

Order in the court!

Order in the court!

"Demjanjuk's trial ended February 18th, 1988,

nearly a year to the day after it began."

It's judicial murder!

"The panel sentenced Demjanjuk to hang."

'Death, death, death, ' chanted a group of teenage boys

in the back of the hall.

All the noises were magnified by the theater's perfect acoustics.

Chanting, singing, clapping, shouting comments.

"Ivan's sighs..."

He is a beast!

He's not a human being!

"In the final hour, John Demjanjuk Jr. stormed"

from the auditorium

as the lawyers bickered and accused each other of playing games.

"'Son of a bitch, ' he muttered to Shaked."

It amounts to nothing less

than an ordered judicial murder

of an innocent man.

"In chambers, Judge Dalia Dorner cried."

It's hard to imagine how, if I'd been on my own,

I would've carried this on my shoulders.

Fundamentally, we couldn't envision

any other punishment that could express the horror.

At the time, reading the verdict out loud,

I didn't know what was happening around me.

You're focused on reading the text, and you don't see what's around you.

You don't know.

I would see his son go up to him, or his daughter.

I would see a... a loving hug.

You know, the terrible Ivan John Grozny Demjanjuk

from Treblinka

was reduced to a loving father

and husband,

and so, in some way, that affection, uh, spoke to us.

But I have to be honest that I felt inside myself, um...

some joy over the fact

that revenge and justice was about...

was about to happen.

When John Demjanjuk returned to his jail cell late last night,

I'm told he was smiling

and saying he felt optimistic about his future.

How's Mr. Demjanjuk today?

It's hard when he sees his daughter so far away from home,

but he's holding his own. Everything's going fine.

What is his mental and physical condition now?

He's an old man.

He's... He's totally devastated by this whole thing.

He's been accused and convicted

of being the most horrible monster of this century.

He goes to sleep every night and wakes up every morning

with a rope hanging over his head.

I just remember the stress and them talking about it.

We were looking at the fact that he... we may never see him again,

and they're gonna, you know, put him to death in Israel.

It was nice, at one point in time,

when we had that bond, that unity as a family,

but you know, after he went,

everything kinda just fell apart, you know?

Like, he was the cement keeping things together.

Next for John Demjanjuk comes what could be a lengthy appeal.

But according to the Justice Department people here

who have predicted with great accuracy the outcome of the trial so far,

John Demjanjuk will most likely lose his appeal

and will most likely be put to death by hanging

sometime in the winter of this year.

I told Demjanjuk, I told the family,

"I'm staying in the case, and we will fight it to the end."

I'm, uh, ready with full force

"to go for the appeal."

Off Flight 483 came dozens of passengers.

One, John Demjanjuk's son-in-law, Ed Nishnic.

Nishnic says the appeal will contain new evidence.

We have, uh, right now, detectives out interviewing, uh, Treblinka survivors

that have, uh, made it through the camp.

There's about 77 of 'em,

and it's shocking that not one survivor outside of the state of Israel

has identified Mr. Demjanjuk.

During the period of the appeal

which followed the conviction for Demjanjuk,

I think Sheftel really wanted to try to rehabilitate himself if he could.

He humiliated himself.

He lost the case,

and his credibility went from zero to subzero.

But he somehow persuaded Dov Eitan,

a former judge, to come on board as a defense lawyer

working for Demjanjuk's overturning of his conviction

during the appeal process.

Sheftel met Dov Eitan in the American Colony Hotel.

It's the place where Sheftel used to stay during the trial.

He heard Dov Eitan saying that... That he noticed

that there are few things that are not right going on in the trial.

Dov Eitan was a retired district court judge,

and he said to me,

right in the beginning, "Listen, I watched the case a lot,

and I cannot believe my eyes."

And quite quickly,

he was on board.

I was Dov's friend.

A very shy man...

very modest.

He was a true gentleman.

Sheftel's complete opposite,

and Sheffi managed

to convince him he had a strong case.

He announced he's joining the team,

that he's going to be one of the two defense lawyers.

Now, he was married, and he had two daughters.

I never had an idea, never had a clue

that he was a homosexual as well.

Dov Eitan had, uh, not an easy life in the '80s in Israel.

He was a bisexual.

His wife knew that, and...

she really loved him and... And accepted that.

And she told me that...

at the beginning,

Dov Eitan really wanted to take part...

um, in this case.

But as the time passed, it got harder and harder.

We had a lot of telephone threats all the time. All the time.

Threats on my life

on my husband's life, on my children's life.

He... He understood that he got into something

that, uh, it would be hard for him to get out of it.

S-Someone sent a... a bullet to their house.

And, uh, all this...

uh, threats of exposing his sexual life and private details, and...

everything that, uh...

got him to...

to do what... what he did.

Five days before the appeal,

someone wakes me up in the morning,

and tell me that Dov Eitan committed suicide just now.

Uh, jumping from the highest building in Jerusalem down.

The lawyer Dov Eitan, a former court district judge,

committed suicide today,

jumping from the 15th floor of the City Tower in central Jerusalem.

Dov Eitan was supposed to represent John Ivan Demjanjuk,

in his appeal to the Supreme Court next week.

The police rule out the possibility of someone causing his death.

I was shocked completely.

Because two, three days before, we were together

at Demjanjuk's cell.

And he was really looking forward, they were thriving...

uh, for arguing the case.

No sign, nothing.

I mean, I didn't see anything

that can suggest that... that...

something like this can happen.

When we heard the news, it's hard to imagine...

that someone could be under so much pressure from blackmail

that he would jump off a 30-story building.

It seems... I don't know.

Uh, I can't explain it.

Mirian told me that in the morning of the suicide,

uh, he got a call.

She said that... That she almost couldn't recognize him

after the... the conversation. I mean...

he... he was really pale, and, um, I mean, he just...

um, took his bag and... and left.

And then a few hours after that,

he... he jumped.

He died five days before the appeal was to begin.

The Israeli authorities say he died from a suicide.

- I don't believe that for one second. - What do you think happened?

I think somebody didn't want Mr. Eitan to stand up against his peers.

I don't know who, I don't even want to begin to think who.

I think Mr. Eitan was pushed out a window.

Sheffi doesn't really like thinking

about complex things.

And here, there were many facets,

one Pandora's box after another.

I don't know.

Maybe it even scares him, I don't know.

With all the tragedy,

I put a motion to the court

to postpone the case.

If the case going to start within five days' time,

I'm... I'm not there.

No, que... I'm not arguing. Again, I'm not coming.

You can decide what... I'm not coming.

Now, Dov Eitan was also a very well-known figure,

so there came hundreds of people to his funeral.

I went there alone.

And suddenly, I hear someone shouting,

and within seconds,

acid thrown to my eyes.

I just saw Sheftel

and threw it at him. He started screaming like a pig.

Someone jumped on me

and said, "Wash your face! Wash your face! Wash your face!"

I didn't want to kill him.

I wanted to scar him.

I wanted every Jew to know that, living amongst them,

was a Nazi collaborator who would sell his mother for money.

Yisrael Yehezkeli was in court every day.

He applauded the verdict, along with everybody else,

but for him, it wasn't enough.

I said to myself, "How much longer have I got to live?

I will take my revenge and honor my parents."

His family died in Treblinka.

Yisrael Yehezkeli served two years in prison.

He was also ordered to pay his victim £10,000 compensation,

but Sheftel has received no money.

Five percent sight left.

I cannot see.

I almost got blind.

Like this was from getting blind.

Trying to determine where the family goes

from here is the main issue right now.

We're gonna try to find another attorney.

I don't know how we're gonna pay for it.

I mean, our doors are about shut right now.

We almost couldn't go forward with this trial,

and actually, we really can't, but,

you know, an innocent man's life is at stake here.

Demjanjuk phoned me from the cell.

He got a permission.

I asked, "What's happening with you? What's going on?"

Because the family was in total shock

because the defense team, one after the other, is gone.

Demjanjuk also said,

kind of understandably, he said,

"Farewell, uh, you know. Thank you for what you've done and...

but I understand that, uh, you're not going on."

I said, "No, I'm going on, I'm going on."

If next spring the appeal fails, that that's the decision

and he... And his sentence to death is upheld,

will you... can... will you and can you even appeal that sentence?

No. Uh, the Supreme Court of Israel is the final stage.

When I found out that the verdict was going to be followed

by a sentence of death,

and it was going to be death by hanging,

I had no doubt that they would do it.

It said that Demjanjuk's cell, where he was kept,

was within earshot

of the gallows being constructed for his own execution.

That was the sickest feeling I've ever had.

They had a special building crew come in

and build the gallows

while we sat in the cell talkin' to Mr. D.

And it's hard to adjust when you've been going 100 miles an hour,

full tilt, 24-7,

as I did in this case, and, uh...

I feel like we bought him time, but that's all.

And as for the accused, John Demjanjuk,

he sits tonight in his constantly lit jail cell

about 37 miles east of Jerusalem,

awaiting his fate.

It's late at night in Berlin, 300,000 people here.

They don't give one hoot about the fact that it's about 27 degrees outside,

and you're looking directly into East Berlin,

where the Brandenburg Gate Plaza is. That's the Berlin Wall.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people on top of it right now...

In 1989,

I think it was November 9th,

in a space of human gridlock,

hundreds of thousands of people trying to break our way up

to the Brandenburg Gate,

where people were starting to stream through already.

Unbeknownst to me at the time...

it signaled the downfall of communism in Soviet Russia.

In the last weeks and months,

we've seen one Communist party after the other in Eastern Europe

knocked off its perch by the people.

The Soviet Union disbanded.

Russia opened up the files of the KGB.

In the files of the KGB,

there were thousands and thousand pages of testimony

about some of these German death camps in Poland.

And among those thousands of pages

were several dozen ironclad,

take-it-to-the-bank, positive identifications

saying that John Demjanjuk could not have been Ivan the Terrible.

I thought the big story of my life was to be present

when the Berlin Wall fell.

This eclipsed it by a wide, wide, wide margin.

It was clear that in order to get to the bottom of this case,

you must have the entire evidence

concern Treblinka and Ivan the Terrible

which was in the Soviet Union,

and only this can clear Demjanjuk.

So, we arrived in Moscow

in the first week of September 1990.

It's obvious,

from the very first second that I stepped on the cursed Soviet soil,

that it's collapsing.

Johnny and Nishnic and myself,

we go into the district court,

we ask, "Where is, uh, the judge?"

And we were told second floor, something like this.

And we see a nice, uh, young lady,

and behind her, a huge picture of a photograph of John Lennon,

no other.

I said to myself, uh, "This place is falling apart."

Anyway, uh, we ask if we can, uh, see the judge,

and the judge says, "Listen, this was a case of the KGB."

They cannot give the material to be photocopied

without permit from the headquarters of the KGB in Ukraine,

"which is Kiev."

Like, uh, in the films and the stories,

we are brought downstairs,

and the KGB man asked, "What do you want?"

And we explained, and he affirmed this.

He says, "Yes",

there were a dozen statement about the operator of the gas chambers."

And I promised him, in Yiddish, a kleyn matone,

"a little present."

And he said that he will get us the material by hook or by crook.

The time passes... and nothing happened.

And he says he's trying, he's pushing, he's going and doing, blah, blah.

No results.

With all this,

we are flying back to Israel.

I contemplated that... uh...

it's a dead end.

Only this evidence

can clear Demjanjuk,

and it was hundred percent obvious that it's not gonna happen.

The hearing on the appeal of John Demjanjuk

will take place in this courtroom next week.

For the time being, he remains a convicted war criminal,

and he awaits the hangman.

And then...

as my Yiddish mame always says,

the mazel starts to speak.

Uh, the good luck.

Less than one week before the deadline,

I received a fax from the headquarters of the KGB

with seven extracts

from the statements of the Wachmanns of Treblinka,

clearly stating Demjanjuk, that he's not Ivan the Terrible,

and who is Ivan the Terrible.

Ivan Marchenko.