Demjanjuk Denies He Was Nazi War Criminal; Israeli Trial Postponed
John Demjanjuk stood trembling in an Israeli court Wednesday and denied having been the sadistic guard who used a sword to prod Jews into the Nazi gas chambers of Treblinka.
“I am not the ‘Ivan the Terrible’ you want to hang,” Demjanjuk, 66, a former auto worker from Cleveland, Ohio, said at his 40-minute hearing on charges of war crimes, crimes against Jews and crimes against humanity.
The case was then adjourned to Jan. 19.
Mark O’Connor, Demjanjuk’s American lawyer, had asked to delay his client’s plea, contending that he didn’t have enough time to review more than eight cartons of evidence.
However, Judge Dov Levine of Jerusalem District Court refused, saying that the three-judge panel considered Demjanjuk’s statement to be a plea of innocent to the charges, for which the maximum penalty is death.
O’Connor claims his client is a victim of mistaken identity and that “Ivan the Terrible” was killed in a camp uprising in 1943.
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