JUSTICE DEPARTMENT DENATURALIZES ACCUSED NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP GUARD

This week, for the second time, the US revoked John Demjanjuk’s citizenship.  In 1981, his citizenship was revoked after a hearing in which it was concluded that Demjanjuk was “Ivan the Terrible,” a notorious guard at the Treblinka concentration camp during World War Two.  He was deported to Israel, where he was put on trial.  He was convicted and sentenced to death, but the conviction was overturned on appeal.  Demjanjuk was allowed to return to the US and had his citizenship restored in 1998.

This second proceeding, unlike the first, did not rely on eyewitness testimony, but on documents, many of which were obtained from archives in the former Soviet Union.  According to the judge hearing the case, the documents, including citizenship and work papers, clearly showed that Demjanjuk had served as a guard at a number of concentration and forced labor camps, including Sorbibor, where more than 250,000 Jews were murdered. 

Demjanjuk can appeal, but if he is unsuccessful, he will face deportation.  He could also be prosecuted again, but as of now, no country has said that they will do so.

Demjanjuk is the 67th person to have their citizenship revoked because of participation in Nazi era persecutions, and only the second to have been found to work at one of the four concentration camps dedicated to the murder of civilians.  Such cases are handled by the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to hunt out former Nazis living in the US.