Israel "I Can't Even Kill a Chicken"

By Michael S. Serrill

The burly, bullnecked defendant listened carefully as he was asked the most pivotal questions of the trial.

"Are you 'Ivan the Terrible'?" inquired Defense Lawyer John Gill.

"I never was and I am not Ivan the Terrible," said John Demjanjuk in resonant bass tones.

"Did you ever kill anyone?"

"Never," he replied. "I can't even kill a chicken."

After months of damning testimony against him, Demjanjuk, 67, a retired Cleveland autoworker, last week took the stand in his own defense for the first time. Throughout four days of grueling examination in a Jerusalem courtroom, Demjanjuk never wavered from his claim that he is a victim of mistaken identity. Israeli prosecutors contend that he was the sadistic guard named Ivan who tended the gas chambers at the Treblinka death camp, where 850,000 Jews were slain. If convicted, he could be hanged under Israeli law. Demjanjuk was deported to Israel after U.S. officials concluded he had lied on his 1951 immigration application.

Demjanjuk stumbled repeatedly as a panel of three judges and a team of well-prepared Israeli prosecutors poked holes in his personal World War II chronology. He maintains that he was drafted into the Russian army in 1941, was captured by the Germans in 1942 and served in German POW camps until 1944, when he joined the anti-Soviet "Vlasov army" in Poland. Asked why he failed at first to tell U.S. authorities that he spent 18 months at a POW camp in Chelm, Poland, as he now insists, Demjanjuk said he forgot. When told that the Vlasov army had not been formed until months after he says he joined it, Demjanjuk pleaded, "Even here in Israel I do not know what month or date it is."

As the trial headed into its sixth month, all of Israel remained captivated. The principal evidence against the accused is a photo identification card provided to the prosecution by the Soviet Union from its World War II archives. Made out in Demjanjuk's name, it was reputedly issued at the Trawniki camp in Poland, where Soviet prisoners were trained to be death-camp guards. The defense alleges that it is a forgery by the Soviet secret police, whose purpose is to embarrass anti-Soviet Ukrainians in the U.S.

But five Treblinka survivors have identified the man pictured on the ID card as Ivan, and several said they recognized Demjanjuk even now as their tormentor. "This is Ivan from the gas chambers," exclaimed Eliahu Rosenberg at a February court session. "I saw those eyes, those murderous eyes." Moreover, the prosecution has paraded a corps of experts to the witness stand to authenticate Demjanjuk's signature on the card and attest that the paper and ink date from World War II.

Demjanjuk's defense has not been helped by constant squabbling among his U.S. and Israeli lawyers. Nor have their tactics impressed the court. When Israeli Defense Attorney Yoram Sheftel argued that his client was the victim of a KGB conspiracy, he was interrupted by Judge Dalia Dorner. Said she: "All that I can say to you is that if this is your line of defense, then you really have a very, very severe problem."

With reporting by Marlin Levin/Jerusalem