Ex-Nazi Ordered Deported by U.S. Could Face Death in Israel

John Demjanjuk, a former Nazi ordered out of the United States to be tried in Israel for the murder of thousands of Jews, could get the death penalty if convicted, Israeli officials said Tuesday.

Demjanjuk, known to concentration camp inmates as “Ivan the Terrible,” on Monday was ordered by a federal judge in Ohio to be extradited to stand trial in Israel for the World War II murder of thousands of Jews at the Treblinka camp in Poland.

Demjanjuk has been given until May 1 to appeal the extradition order. If he loses the appeal, he would be the first alleged Nazi criminal extradited by the United States to Israel and only the second man to go on trial here for Nazi war crimes. In 1962, Israel hanged Adolf Eichmann after he was convicted of sending millions of Jews to Nazi death camps.

Dennis Goldman, in charge of extradition cases in the Justice Ministry, said he hopes the case will encourage other countries to deport former Nazis sought by Israel.

Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, 65, of Seven Hills, Ohio, would be tried by a three-judge tribunal, Goldman said. Israel has been seeking his extradition since November, 1983.

Demjanjuk entered the United States in 1952 and worked as a car mechanic. He became a U.S. citizen in 1958, but citizenship was stripped from him in 1981 for having concealed his wartime activities, and he was ordered deported last year.

Evidence at his trials in the United States showed that Demjanjuk served as an armed guard and gas chamber operator for the Nazi SS elite corps at the Treblinka camp in 1942 and 1943.

Eliahu Rosenberg, a Treblinka inmate who testified against Demjanjuk in the United States, told reporters he saw him removing the bodies of Jews from gas chambers.

“I saw how he operated,” Rosenberg said. “He had a pipe or a board in his hand with which he killed people even before they were put into the gas chambers.”