Crying Survivor Identifies Demjanjuk as Camp Guard

Sobbing in his chair, a survivor of the Treblinka death camp today identified John Demjanjuk as the sadistic Nazi guard known as “Ivan the Terrible” who beat prisoners with pipes and bayonets and mutilated their corpses.

“That’s him sitting over there,” said Pinchas Epstein, pointing to Demjanjuk after being asked to identify a picture of Ivan from an album of photos.

Epstein, 61, was the first camp survivor to testify in the war crimes trial. The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, who settled in Cleveland after World War II, is accused of being one of two guards who turned on the gas chamber engines to kill 850,000 Jews at Treblinka in Nazi-occupied Poland from 1942 to 1943.

“This is the man, the man sitting over there. Age has of course changed him but not so that he would become unrecognizable,” Epstein said, his face turning red. He pounded the stand repeatedly and sometimes shouted.

Applauding Spectators Silenced

Some spectators applauded and were silenced by the presiding judge.

Demjanjuk, 66, who was stripped of his U.S. citizenship before being extradited to Israel last year, denies the charges. He says he is a victim of mistaken identity.

If convicted, he could receive the death penalty.

Demjanjuk’s American attorney, Mark O’Connor, cross-examined Epstein about the specifics of Ivan’s appearance. O’Connor has based his defense on the contention that the actual Ivan was killed in a camp uprising in 1943.

Epstein, who lives in Israel, told O’Connor he watched Demjanjuk disembarking from an airplane at Ben Gurion Airport last February when he was extradited to Israel.

“When he got off the plane, I saw the way he walked. I saw his movements as I remembered them from Treblinka,” Epstein said.

‘Imprinted in My Mind’

“There are certain features which after so many years are marked in one’s memory,” Epstein said. “I see Ivan every night. He is imprinted in my mind. I cannot rid myself of these impressions.”

Epstein said that while imprisoned at Treblinka he was responsible for removing corpses from the gas chamber. “This Ivan would come out of the engine room and beat us mercilessly,” he recounted.

Epstein managed to escape from Treblinka during an uprising on Aug. 3, 1943. His parents, two brothers and a sister died there.