Suspected Nazi Camp Guard Calls Accuser ‘a Liar’

John Demjanjuk whispered, “You are a liar” in Hebrew on Monday after a Treblinka death camp survivor testified that the retired Ohio auto worker was the sadistic Nazi guard “Ivan the Terrible.”

As Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir watched from a front-row seat at Demjanjuk’s trial, witness Eliahu Rosenberg gave a graphic description of naked inmates being burned alive with chemicals for trying to escape Treblinka’s gas chambers.

After defense attorney Mark O’Connor asked Rosenberg why he did nothing to help the victims, Rosenberg gestured toward the Ukranian-born Demjanjuk, then shouted: “Ask him what would have happened to me.

“I ask the court, in what manner could I have helped them? By screaming? They would have shoved me straight into a pit of blood,” Rosenberg said.

Judge’s Request

At that point, presiding Judge Dov Levine said he heard Demjanjuk say something and asked O’Connor to repeat the defendant’s words for the court.

After speaking briefly with his client, O’Connor repeated Demjanjuk’s statement, which he said was made in Hebrew. “He said, ‘You are liar,’ ” O’Connor reported.

“Bear this in the context of a man sitting in a cell for one year, suffering in his own way,” O’Connor added. “He said what he said in Hebrew . . . to show us he’s human, to show us he has emotions.”

Demjanjuk, accused of Nazi war crimes, has denied charges that he beat and tortured inmates before switching on the gas chamber engines at the Treblinka death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where more than 850,000 Jews perished in 1942-43.

His defense attorneys say Demjanjuk, 66, is a victim of mistaken identity. They maintain the real Ivan was killed in an August, 1943, prisoner uprising.

First Contradiction

Demjanjuk’s statement was the first time since the trial opened Feb. 16 that he has contradicted testimony by Rosenberg and another Treblinka survivor who identified him as the brutal Ukrainian guard “Ivan.”

Demjanjuk’s attorneys will have an opportunity to present his version of events later in the trial when defense witnesses are summoned.

Shamir, 71, who spent an hour listening to the testimony, told reporters that he was moved and shocked.

Shamir Praises Witness

“I am full of admiration for the witness I heard. I don’t know where he (Rosenberg) derives the strength to be able to discuss the most minute details of the horrors of that camp,” said Shamir, whose parents and other close relatives died at Auschwitz in Poland.

Rosenberg, the second Treblinka survivor to testify, testified again about the children he heard screaming in the gas chambers.

“Inside the gas chambers, I would hear the screams of these poor people, because by that time they already knew it wasn’t a shower,” he said. “ ‘Mommy, Papa, Mother, Father,’ the screams. And the gas entered the gas chambers and slowly all the noise died down.”