Post by hi224 on Nov 21, 2019 21:16:16 GMT
After watching The devil next door documentary few days ago I fell down the rabbit hole as I felt that documentary didn't present all the evidence. I think the real Ivan the terrible escaped justice and his whereabouts after the war and fate is a mystery.
For those who didn't watch (I recommend that you watch it), in 1980's evidence came from Soviet Union that placed Cleveland Auto shop worker named John Demjanjuk in Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. He was accused of being Ivan the terrible who operated the petrol engines sending gas to the death chamber. He was a camp guard who was known for his savagery and cruelty. Such things as cutting off breasts from Jewish female prisoners and viciously beating prisoners with 1 meter long waterpipe were attributed to him.
He was extradited from US to Israel to face the trial. The conclusion of the first trial was that he was guilty of being Ivan the terrible and was sentenced to death and was to be hanged. Five years later the defence presented evidence that convinced the Judges to overturn the sentence. He was later found guilty in trial in Germany for being accessory to murder of 27,900 Jews in Sobibor extermination camp.
The first evidence was an ID card called the Trawniki Document which trial experts said appeared to be authentic. On it was a picture of John Demjanjuk and his personal information. Trawniki was a training camp for death camp guards that were sent on field and took an active role in the extermination of Jews at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka II, Warsaw, Częstochowa, Lublin, Lvov, Radom, Kraków, Białystok, Majdanek as well as Auschwitz and Trawniki concentration camp itself.
The authenticity of this ID card later came into questioning:
from wikipedia:
On 5 March 1992, German magazine Stern published a claim that the Israeli prosecution concealed crucial information about the Trawniki card being a forgery, and that the Israelis had the full cooperation of the German police and the Ministry of Justice. The article stated that on 23 January 1986, three weeks before the trial, Superintendent Amnon Bezaleli took the original Trawniki card for examination at the German police force's main criminal-identification laboratory at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in Wiesbaden. Bezaleli was the prosecution's central witness on the Trawniki document. According to Stern, the BKA, after a cursory examination, told Bezaleli that this was a counterfeit document forged in a more or less amateur way.
The BKA laboratory's preliminary analysis addressed the following points: the face in the photograph, which the prosecution identified as Demjanjuk's, had been pasted onto the uniform using photomontage techniques; the picture was not originally attached to the card, but had been transferred from another document; there was no match between the seal on the Trawniki picture and that on the document itself. The analysts did not have time to compare Demjanjuk's known signature with the Demjanjuk signature on the Travniki document. Dr. Louis Ferdinand Werner, head of the BKA, speculated to Bezaleli in a private conversation that the card was counterfeit. Bezaleli consulted people from the state prosecutor's office in Jerusalem, then instructed Werner to stop all tests on the card.
Then there were witnesses. Multiple witnesses identified Ivan Demjanjuk as being Ivan the terrible.
From wikipedia:
One remarkable event involved a star witness for the prosecution, Eliyahu Rosenberg. Asked by the prosecution if he recognized Demjanjuk, Rosenberg asked that the defendant remove his glasses "so I can see his eyes." Rosenberg approached and peered closely at Demjanjuk's face. When Demjanjuk smiled and offered his hand, Rosenberg recoiled and shouted "Grozny!" meaning "Terrible" in Polish and Russian. "Ivan", Rosenberg said. "I say it unhesitatingly, without the slightest shadow of a doubt. It is Ivan from Treblinka, from the gas chambers, the man I am looking at now." "I saw his eyes, I saw those murderous eyes", Rosenberg told the court, glaring at Demjanjuk. Rosenberg then exclaimed directly to Demjanjuk: "How dare you put out your hand, murderer that you are!"
It was later revealed with great embarrassment for the prosecution that Eliyahu Rosenberg had previously testified in a 1947 deposition that "Ivan the Terrible" had been killed in 1943 during a Treblinka prisoner uprising
his deposition from 1947 can be found here
Another witness's testimony was also questioned of credibility as he did not remember his child's name.
also from wiki:
The reliability of witnesses' memory (including issues of confabulation, stress-impaired memory, memory errors) and the psychology of witnesses' testimony (such as unconscious transference and mistaken identity, positive response bias, weapon focus effect, confirmation bias) were also key issues of expert testimony
During the trial, Demjanjuk was again identified on the photo spread by Otto Horn, a former German SS guard at Treblinka. This testimony became controversial later because it was discovered by Yoram Sheftel that on 14 November 1979, Otto Horn was interviewed by the newly created US Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations (OSI). The OSI showed him the picture of Demjanjuk, but at that time Horn failed to identify Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible, or even as a guard from Treblinka, or as anyone he ever knew in the SS forces. The OSI report regarding Otto Horn's failure to identify John Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible would have been exculpatory, but was withheld by the OSI
Another major evidence against Demjanjuk was that on his Trawniki ID card it stated that his mothers maiden name was Marchenko, which seriously burdens him, but after talking with my Ukrainian friend he said that Marchenko was a popular surname back then and based on that i think that is one huge confusing coincidence
My personal opinion about Demjanjuk is that he is not Ivan the terrible and the judges did the right thing overturning the sentence, however it is without a doubt clear that he was in fact at Sobibor and was guilty of being accessory to murder of 27,900 of Jews. I came to the conclusion that he is not Ivan the terrible based on research which I will present further. The real mystery is, who was and what happened to Ivan Marchenko, the real Ivan the terrible after the war.
The first thing i read after watching the documentary was who this Ivan the terrible really was. From multiple survivors and camp guards testimonies was known, Ivan the terrible was a gas chamber operator that was infamous for his cruelty. From testimonies it is stated that Ivan the Terrible's name was Ivan Marchenko
The survivors stated that Ivan the terrible had an friend with whom he operated the gas chambers. from this source:
A number of interrogations took place after the end of the Second World War with people that served with Ivan Marchenko in the SS Training camp at Trawniki, in Poland or at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. Marchenko was infamous because of the evil deeds he committed, where he drove helpless and innocent Jewish men, women, and children, into the gas chambers. Once crammed inside Marchenko and another Trawniki-manner Nikolay Shalayev, turned on the engines that pumped carbon monoxide into the gas chambers to murder the people inside.
on the same site can be found a testimony of his coworker Nikolai Shalayev. He described him(Ivan Marchenko) as follows:
Characteristics: Tall, black haired, hazel eyes, rectangular thin face, large thin straight nose; a not too noticeable slanted scar, thick set physique, broad shouldered; while walking his arms were not straight, but half bent at the elbows.
Another cruicial testimony is from another coworker called can be found here. From this testimony it is clear that Demjanjuk and Ivan the terrible were two different persons.
From conversations with Demjanjuk I do know that he was from Vinnitsa Oblast. He was roughly 2-3 years older than I, had light brown hair with noticeable bald spots at that time, was heavyset, had gray eyes and was slightly taller than I, roughly 186-187cm tall.
His (Demjanjuk's) occupation in the camp was a guard and his duty was to make sure prisoners didn't try to make attempts entering or escaping the camp:
from Ignat Danilchenko's testimony:
At Sobibor, Demjanjuk served as a private in the SS guard and was dressed in a black SS uniform with a gray collar. He was always armed with a loaded rifle.
While standing guard outside the camp Demjanjuk, like the other guards, was issued a sub-machine gun and ammunition. While at his post he was obligated to make sure that there were no attempts by outside persons to enter the camp or attempted escapes from it. Demjanjuk, like all guards in the camp, participated in the mass killing of Jews. I also participated in this crime and I was convicted and punished for it. While I was at the camp I repeatedly saw Demjanjuk, armed with a rifle, together with other guards and, in many cases, myself, guard prisoners in all areas of the camp, from the unloaded platform to the entrance into the gas chamber. Demjanjuk escorted people until they reached the gas chamber to avoid violations by the prisoners of the “procedure” in which they were sent to be killed. I cannot specifically say under what circumstances or how many groups of prisoners Demjanjuk escorted to the gas chamber during his service at the camp, since this was constant, daily work.
while this is not a proof that Ivan Demjanjuk is not Ivan the terrible it is certainly a proof that he was not the operator of gas chambers. And that Ivan Demjanjuk and Ivan Marchenko were two different people.There is also no evidence aside from witnesses that places Ivan Demjanjuk in Treblinka.
There is also age discrepancy in Ivan Demjanjuk and Ivan Marchenko. Stated on Ivan Demjanjuk's Trawniki ID card and his visa application is birth year 1920. Copy of Marchenko's application form from Trawniki can be found here and birth year is stated 1911, and his coworker Nikolay Shalayev with whom he operated the gas chambers also confirmed this as he stated:
Do not know his patronymic, born in 1911, native of Dnepropetrovsk, Oblast. Before the war worked in Kryvy Rog in the mines as a miner, was not a Party member, was married had one son at that time, in 1943, was 19 years old. Was drafted into the Soviet Army at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, had the rank of a private.
this testimony can be found here
Another thing Nikolay said was this:
In June 1943, together with me, he (Ivan Marchenko) left for the city of Trieste, Italy, where he guarded German warehouses at the port, guarded the Trieste prison and took part in round-up of Italian citizens for forced labour in Germany. He wore a German uniform of the 'SS' and carried a rifle. In the spring of 1944, together with a driver by the name of Grigory, he fled in an armour personnel carrier from the city of Fiume (this is a city in Croatia, called Rijeka) to the partisans in Yugoslavia. I never saw him after that and do not know where he is.
while Ignat Terent’yevich Danilchenko stated this:
In March or April of 1944, Demjanjuk and I were sent from Sobibor to the city of Flossenburg in Germany, where we guarded an aircraft factory and a concentration camp for political prisoners. In case we were wounded, all of the guards at this camp, including Demjanjuk, were given a tattoo on the inside of the left arm, above the wrist, designating their blood type. I still have this tattoo, the German letter “B” designating my blood type. I do not know what letter designated Demjanjuk’s blood type. In late autumn of 1944, in October or November, Demjanjuk and I (among other guards) were sent to the city of Regensburg, or rather from the concentration camp located 18-29 km from Regensburg. Until April of 1945, we guarded the prisoners in this camp, who did construction work. In April of 1945, due to the approach of the front the entire camp was evacuated and marched toward the city of Nuremburg. I escaped along the way but Demjanjuk continued to accompany the prisoners. I suggested that he escape with me, but he refused. I have never seen Demjanjuk since then and his fate is unknown to me. I also know nothing about the fate of the prisoners who were on that march.
By now it is clear to me that Ivan Demjanjuk and Ivan Marchenko were two different people and he couldn't have been Ivan the terrible. This was known to the OSI but they withheld the evidence in the first trial.
The real unresolved question here is what happened to the real Ivan the terrible.After WW2 if you were in the partisans you were safe. Collaborators were being shot even after war (mass killings of collaborators happened all over Yugoslavia, mass graves are still being dug up today). Nikolay stated that he fled to the partisans from Rijeka, so if partisans accepted him in their ranks it is quite possible that he survived the war and even lived after it without ever meeting justice.
Anyways, here's my opinion and research that i have been conducting for the past three days, the whole story was really interesting, and I think its really sad that the real Ivan the terrible got away without ever meeting justice, maybe if the whole trial wouldn't be conducted in Israel and be biased as much as it was, the judges would come to the conclusion that he wasn't the real Ivan the terrible in the first trial, maybe there would still be time to search for the real Ivan the terrible, but now I think its a bit too late.
If i forgot something or if i got my facts wrong or anything please correct me. I also want your opinions about this.
EDIT: I forgot one little thing that for me proves my theory (it's a bit subjective) .. In the documentary Demjanjuk says one thing...
"I will tell you only one thing.. I was not operator of the gas chambers"
this is a confession that he was in fact camp guard, but denies being Ivan the terrible.. And I believe him
For those who didn't watch (I recommend that you watch it), in 1980's evidence came from Soviet Union that placed Cleveland Auto shop worker named John Demjanjuk in Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. He was accused of being Ivan the terrible who operated the petrol engines sending gas to the death chamber. He was a camp guard who was known for his savagery and cruelty. Such things as cutting off breasts from Jewish female prisoners and viciously beating prisoners with 1 meter long waterpipe were attributed to him.
He was extradited from US to Israel to face the trial. The conclusion of the first trial was that he was guilty of being Ivan the terrible and was sentenced to death and was to be hanged. Five years later the defence presented evidence that convinced the Judges to overturn the sentence. He was later found guilty in trial in Germany for being accessory to murder of 27,900 Jews in Sobibor extermination camp.
The first evidence was an ID card called the Trawniki Document which trial experts said appeared to be authentic. On it was a picture of John Demjanjuk and his personal information. Trawniki was a training camp for death camp guards that were sent on field and took an active role in the extermination of Jews at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka II, Warsaw, Częstochowa, Lublin, Lvov, Radom, Kraków, Białystok, Majdanek as well as Auschwitz and Trawniki concentration camp itself.
The authenticity of this ID card later came into questioning:
from wikipedia:
On 5 March 1992, German magazine Stern published a claim that the Israeli prosecution concealed crucial information about the Trawniki card being a forgery, and that the Israelis had the full cooperation of the German police and the Ministry of Justice. The article stated that on 23 January 1986, three weeks before the trial, Superintendent Amnon Bezaleli took the original Trawniki card for examination at the German police force's main criminal-identification laboratory at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in Wiesbaden. Bezaleli was the prosecution's central witness on the Trawniki document. According to Stern, the BKA, after a cursory examination, told Bezaleli that this was a counterfeit document forged in a more or less amateur way.
The BKA laboratory's preliminary analysis addressed the following points: the face in the photograph, which the prosecution identified as Demjanjuk's, had been pasted onto the uniform using photomontage techniques; the picture was not originally attached to the card, but had been transferred from another document; there was no match between the seal on the Trawniki picture and that on the document itself. The analysts did not have time to compare Demjanjuk's known signature with the Demjanjuk signature on the Travniki document. Dr. Louis Ferdinand Werner, head of the BKA, speculated to Bezaleli in a private conversation that the card was counterfeit. Bezaleli consulted people from the state prosecutor's office in Jerusalem, then instructed Werner to stop all tests on the card.
Then there were witnesses. Multiple witnesses identified Ivan Demjanjuk as being Ivan the terrible.
From wikipedia:
One remarkable event involved a star witness for the prosecution, Eliyahu Rosenberg. Asked by the prosecution if he recognized Demjanjuk, Rosenberg asked that the defendant remove his glasses "so I can see his eyes." Rosenberg approached and peered closely at Demjanjuk's face. When Demjanjuk smiled and offered his hand, Rosenberg recoiled and shouted "Grozny!" meaning "Terrible" in Polish and Russian. "Ivan", Rosenberg said. "I say it unhesitatingly, without the slightest shadow of a doubt. It is Ivan from Treblinka, from the gas chambers, the man I am looking at now." "I saw his eyes, I saw those murderous eyes", Rosenberg told the court, glaring at Demjanjuk. Rosenberg then exclaimed directly to Demjanjuk: "How dare you put out your hand, murderer that you are!"
It was later revealed with great embarrassment for the prosecution that Eliyahu Rosenberg had previously testified in a 1947 deposition that "Ivan the Terrible" had been killed in 1943 during a Treblinka prisoner uprising
his deposition from 1947 can be found here
Another witness's testimony was also questioned of credibility as he did not remember his child's name.
also from wiki:
The reliability of witnesses' memory (including issues of confabulation, stress-impaired memory, memory errors) and the psychology of witnesses' testimony (such as unconscious transference and mistaken identity, positive response bias, weapon focus effect, confirmation bias) were also key issues of expert testimony
During the trial, Demjanjuk was again identified on the photo spread by Otto Horn, a former German SS guard at Treblinka. This testimony became controversial later because it was discovered by Yoram Sheftel that on 14 November 1979, Otto Horn was interviewed by the newly created US Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations (OSI). The OSI showed him the picture of Demjanjuk, but at that time Horn failed to identify Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible, or even as a guard from Treblinka, or as anyone he ever knew in the SS forces. The OSI report regarding Otto Horn's failure to identify John Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible would have been exculpatory, but was withheld by the OSI
Another major evidence against Demjanjuk was that on his Trawniki ID card it stated that his mothers maiden name was Marchenko, which seriously burdens him, but after talking with my Ukrainian friend he said that Marchenko was a popular surname back then and based on that i think that is one huge confusing coincidence
My personal opinion about Demjanjuk is that he is not Ivan the terrible and the judges did the right thing overturning the sentence, however it is without a doubt clear that he was in fact at Sobibor and was guilty of being accessory to murder of 27,900 of Jews. I came to the conclusion that he is not Ivan the terrible based on research which I will present further. The real mystery is, who was and what happened to Ivan Marchenko, the real Ivan the terrible after the war.
The first thing i read after watching the documentary was who this Ivan the terrible really was. From multiple survivors and camp guards testimonies was known, Ivan the terrible was a gas chamber operator that was infamous for his cruelty. From testimonies it is stated that Ivan the Terrible's name was Ivan Marchenko
The survivors stated that Ivan the terrible had an friend with whom he operated the gas chambers. from this source:
A number of interrogations took place after the end of the Second World War with people that served with Ivan Marchenko in the SS Training camp at Trawniki, in Poland or at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. Marchenko was infamous because of the evil deeds he committed, where he drove helpless and innocent Jewish men, women, and children, into the gas chambers. Once crammed inside Marchenko and another Trawniki-manner Nikolay Shalayev, turned on the engines that pumped carbon monoxide into the gas chambers to murder the people inside.
on the same site can be found a testimony of his coworker Nikolai Shalayev. He described him(Ivan Marchenko) as follows:
Characteristics: Tall, black haired, hazel eyes, rectangular thin face, large thin straight nose; a not too noticeable slanted scar, thick set physique, broad shouldered; while walking his arms were not straight, but half bent at the elbows.
Another cruicial testimony is from another coworker called can be found here. From this testimony it is clear that Demjanjuk and Ivan the terrible were two different persons.
From conversations with Demjanjuk I do know that he was from Vinnitsa Oblast. He was roughly 2-3 years older than I, had light brown hair with noticeable bald spots at that time, was heavyset, had gray eyes and was slightly taller than I, roughly 186-187cm tall.
His (Demjanjuk's) occupation in the camp was a guard and his duty was to make sure prisoners didn't try to make attempts entering or escaping the camp:
from Ignat Danilchenko's testimony:
At Sobibor, Demjanjuk served as a private in the SS guard and was dressed in a black SS uniform with a gray collar. He was always armed with a loaded rifle.
While standing guard outside the camp Demjanjuk, like the other guards, was issued a sub-machine gun and ammunition. While at his post he was obligated to make sure that there were no attempts by outside persons to enter the camp or attempted escapes from it. Demjanjuk, like all guards in the camp, participated in the mass killing of Jews. I also participated in this crime and I was convicted and punished for it. While I was at the camp I repeatedly saw Demjanjuk, armed with a rifle, together with other guards and, in many cases, myself, guard prisoners in all areas of the camp, from the unloaded platform to the entrance into the gas chamber. Demjanjuk escorted people until they reached the gas chamber to avoid violations by the prisoners of the “procedure” in which they were sent to be killed. I cannot specifically say under what circumstances or how many groups of prisoners Demjanjuk escorted to the gas chamber during his service at the camp, since this was constant, daily work.
while this is not a proof that Ivan Demjanjuk is not Ivan the terrible it is certainly a proof that he was not the operator of gas chambers. And that Ivan Demjanjuk and Ivan Marchenko were two different people.There is also no evidence aside from witnesses that places Ivan Demjanjuk in Treblinka.
There is also age discrepancy in Ivan Demjanjuk and Ivan Marchenko. Stated on Ivan Demjanjuk's Trawniki ID card and his visa application is birth year 1920. Copy of Marchenko's application form from Trawniki can be found here and birth year is stated 1911, and his coworker Nikolay Shalayev with whom he operated the gas chambers also confirmed this as he stated:
Do not know his patronymic, born in 1911, native of Dnepropetrovsk, Oblast. Before the war worked in Kryvy Rog in the mines as a miner, was not a Party member, was married had one son at that time, in 1943, was 19 years old. Was drafted into the Soviet Army at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, had the rank of a private.
this testimony can be found here
Another thing Nikolay said was this:
In June 1943, together with me, he (Ivan Marchenko) left for the city of Trieste, Italy, where he guarded German warehouses at the port, guarded the Trieste prison and took part in round-up of Italian citizens for forced labour in Germany. He wore a German uniform of the 'SS' and carried a rifle. In the spring of 1944, together with a driver by the name of Grigory, he fled in an armour personnel carrier from the city of Fiume (this is a city in Croatia, called Rijeka) to the partisans in Yugoslavia. I never saw him after that and do not know where he is.
while Ignat Terent’yevich Danilchenko stated this:
In March or April of 1944, Demjanjuk and I were sent from Sobibor to the city of Flossenburg in Germany, where we guarded an aircraft factory and a concentration camp for political prisoners. In case we were wounded, all of the guards at this camp, including Demjanjuk, were given a tattoo on the inside of the left arm, above the wrist, designating their blood type. I still have this tattoo, the German letter “B” designating my blood type. I do not know what letter designated Demjanjuk’s blood type. In late autumn of 1944, in October or November, Demjanjuk and I (among other guards) were sent to the city of Regensburg, or rather from the concentration camp located 18-29 km from Regensburg. Until April of 1945, we guarded the prisoners in this camp, who did construction work. In April of 1945, due to the approach of the front the entire camp was evacuated and marched toward the city of Nuremburg. I escaped along the way but Demjanjuk continued to accompany the prisoners. I suggested that he escape with me, but he refused. I have never seen Demjanjuk since then and his fate is unknown to me. I also know nothing about the fate of the prisoners who were on that march.
By now it is clear to me that Ivan Demjanjuk and Ivan Marchenko were two different people and he couldn't have been Ivan the terrible. This was known to the OSI but they withheld the evidence in the first trial.
The real unresolved question here is what happened to the real Ivan the terrible.After WW2 if you were in the partisans you were safe. Collaborators were being shot even after war (mass killings of collaborators happened all over Yugoslavia, mass graves are still being dug up today). Nikolay stated that he fled to the partisans from Rijeka, so if partisans accepted him in their ranks it is quite possible that he survived the war and even lived after it without ever meeting justice.
Anyways, here's my opinion and research that i have been conducting for the past three days, the whole story was really interesting, and I think its really sad that the real Ivan the terrible got away without ever meeting justice, maybe if the whole trial wouldn't be conducted in Israel and be biased as much as it was, the judges would come to the conclusion that he wasn't the real Ivan the terrible in the first trial, maybe there would still be time to search for the real Ivan the terrible, but now I think its a bit too late.
If i forgot something or if i got my facts wrong or anything please correct me. I also want your opinions about this.
EDIT: I forgot one little thing that for me proves my theory (it's a bit subjective) .. In the documentary Demjanjuk says one thing...
"I will tell you only one thing.. I was not operator of the gas chambers"
this is a confession that he was in fact camp guard, but denies being Ivan the terrible.. And I believe him