EP 45: John Demjanjuk: War Criminal? Or Victim of Mistaken Identity?

This week on Hashtag History, we are discussing John Demjanjuk. In 1975, the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service received a list of individuals living in the United States that were suspected of having supported Germany during the Second World War. One particular name on this list was that of John Demjanjuk, a fifty-five year old naturalized US citizen living in the suburbs of Seven Hills, Ohio with his wife and kids. He would be identified by Holocaust survivors in Israel that alleged that he was the notorious “Ivan the Terrible” that worked at the Treblinka extermination camp where hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed. Demjanjuk would deny these accusations and would fight it in court for the remainder of his life. When he died in 2012, a final judgment on his appeal still hadn’t been issued, meaning that - to this day - Demjanjuk is technically, on paper, innocent…

So is this a case of one of the most horrific Nazis of all time being convicted for his crimes? Or is it an innocent man and a victim of mistaken identity?

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- Rachel and Leah