Nazi Camp Survivor Tells of Attack on ‘Ivan the Terrible’

A Nazi death camp survivor acknowledged Thursday that he signed an eight-page statement in 1947 describing how inmates beat camp guard “Ivan the Terrible” and other Ukrainian guards with shovels during an uprising, dealing them “murderous blows.”

Eliyahu Rosenberg, 65, came close to tears during four hours of cross-examination as defense attorney Mark O’Connor questioned him about contradictory accounts of whether Ivan was killed in a prisoner uprising at the Treblinka death camp in Poland during World War II.

The 1947 statement, read in court Wednesday, did not specify if Ivan died in the August, 1943, camp uprising.

Rosenberg testified Wednesday that the defendant, John Demjanjuk, was “Ivan the Terrible,” a guard who operated the gas chamber at the Treblinka camp.

Demjanjuk, 66, a retired auto worker from Cleveland, denies the charges against him and says he is a victim of mistaken identity. The defense contends that the real Ivan was killed in the camp uprising.

Hid in Forest

Rosenberg, who escaped during the Treblinka uprising, told the court Thursday that the 1947 account of the rebellion, recorded by Nazi hunter Tuvia Friedman, was based on reports by other inmates he met while hiding in a forest outside Treblinka.

“There’s a critical section of the document about the death of Ivan. I want to know if it’s true?” O’Connor asked Rosenberg.

“I think I told him (Friedman) in Yiddish that I met friends who said, ‘We broke into the barracks where the Ukrainians slept and that’s where Ivan slept,’ ” Rosenberg said. “I also told him Ivan wasn’t killed, that he is still alive, at the same time I told him about this story.”

O’Connor said the defense is likely to call Friedman to testify but did not elaborate. Friedman, who now lives in Israel, was instrumental in tracking down Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann, who was tried and hanged here in 1962.

Judge Dov Levine recessed the trial until Monday when Rosenberg is likely to face further cross-examination by O’Connor.

More than 500 spectators, including dozens of school children, packed the converted theater. About 200 spectators who waited in the rain were turned away for lack of space.

Israel radio said the government plans to open up an additional hall where the hearings can be viewed on closed circuit television.