Demjanjuk Called ‘Ivan the Terrible’ by 2nd Camp Survivor

A second survivor of Treblinka, the Nazi death camp in wartime Poland, on Wednesday identified retired Cleveland auto worker John Demjanjuk as the sadistic guard known as “Ivan the Terrible.”

Eliyahu Rosenberg, a retired port worker, strode across the courtroom where Demjanjuk is on trial charged with war crimes and stared into the accused man’s eyes from a distance of about three feet.

When Demjanjuk smiled and stuck out his hand, Rosenberg recoiled in shock and cried out. His wife, seated among the spectators, fainted.

Pulled back to his chair on the witness stand, Rosenberg threw his head back and closed his eyes for several seconds. Then, prosecuting attorney Michael Shaked, at the direction of the chief judge, Dov Levin, asked him again, “Who is the man?”

“Ivan,” Rosenberg replied. “I say unhesitatingly and without the slightest doubt, this is Ivan from Treblinka, from the gas chamber. I saw those eyes--those murderous eyes.”

On Monday another Treblinka survivor, Pinchas Epstein, identified Demjanjuk as Ivan.

Demjanjuk, who was stripped of U.S. citizenship in 1981 and extradited to Israel last year to face war crimes charges, contends that he is a victim of mistaken identity, that he was never in Treblinka.

Yoram Sheftel, Demjanjuk’s Israeli co-counsel, objected that because of the circumstances, courtroom identification is meaningless. And a court spokesman, Yossi Hasin, quoted Judge Levin as agreeing that, legally, the identifications carry “very little weight.”

The prosecution bases its case against Demjanjuk on the testimony of eight Treblinka survivors who have identified him from a photograph taken in connection with his emigration to the United States after World War II. It intends to offer as proof a disputed German identity card reputedly showing that he was recruited from a prisoner of war camp into a special unit of Nazi death camp collaborators.

Rosenberg said he survived 11 months in Treblinka in 1942-43 because he was assigned to remove bodies from the gas chambers and throw them into mass graves. Only about 50 of about 870,000 Jews sent to Treblinka survived; they escaped during an inmate uprising in August, 1943.

Rosenberg described the camp in much the same way as Epstein did, breaking down as he told of listening to the screams of people dying in the gas chambers.

He said that he and others forced to work in the camp were beaten regularly and that many hanged themselves.

“We would help them by taking away the stools,” he said.