Language:
German
Year of publication:
2009
Titel der Quelle:
Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung
Angaben zur Quelle:
18 (2009) 251-266
Keywords:
Demjanjuk, John
;
Sobibór (Concentration camp)
;
War crime trials
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Nazi concentration camps
Abstract:
Examines the role of Trawniki prisoners during the Holocaust, and attempts to analyze John Demjanjuk's identity. Demjanjuk is accused of the murder of 27,900 Jews in the Sobibór concentration camp in 1943. Ca. 4,000 POWs, many of them Ukrainians, from various camps in the Lublin area trained for several months in 1942 in the Trawniki camp, and then took part in roundups, deportations, and massacres of Jews. Emphasizes the cruelty of the Trawniki men, who acted as the long arm of the SS and did the dirty work in their place. John Demjanjuk was born in 1920 in a Ukrainian village, served in the Red Army, and became a POW in May 1942. After his training at Trawniki, he was employed as a guard at Sobibór. At the end of the war he managed to get DP recognition; he emigrated to the USA in 1952, and obtained citizenship in 1958. Soviet authorities eventually informed the Americans of his role as a camp guard. He was extradited to Israel in the 1980s under suspicion of being "Ivan the Terrible", and sentenced to death in 1988. However, the verdict was overturned in 1992 due to doubts concerning his identity. Demjanjuk was returned to the USA, but new proceedings led to his extradition to Germany in April 2008, where he is awaiting judgment concerning his role in Sobibór.
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