Nazi ID Not Forged, Expert Says as ‘Ivan’ Prosecution Ends Case

The final prosecution witness in the war crimes trial of former Cleveland auto worker John Demjanjuk said Thursday that a Nazi identification card bearing Demjanjuk’s name and photograph shows no signs of being forged, as the defense contends.

Anthony Cantu, a U.S. Treasury Department forensic chemist who conducted tests on the card’s ink and paper, testified that in his opinion the prosecution’s key piece of evidence against Demjanjuk is genuine.

With Cantu’s testimony, the prosecution concluded its case against Demjanjuk, who is accused of being the notorious “Ivan the Terrible,” a sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp who was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews during World War II.

The defense, which maintains that Demjanjuk is a victim of mistaken identity, will move Monday for acquittal of the retired Ford Motor Co. employee, who was stripped of his U.S. citizenship and extradited to Israel last year.

Demjanjuk, 67, faces the death penalty if convicted.

As the controversial trial moves into its final phase, tension and disagreement among the three lawyers defending Demjanjuk have emerged in the courtroom and outside it. Members of the Demjanjuk family confirmed that chief attorney Mark O’Conner no longer has sole authority to plan Demjanjuk’s defense.

The tension, which has been building since the trial started Feb. 16, erupted into the open Wednesday when it became apparent that Demjanjuk’s two other attorneys, American John Gill and Israeli Yoram Sheftel, had reached an agreement with the prosecution concerning the presentation of evidence without O’Conner’s consent.

Under Tremendous Pressure

O’Conner appeared to blame Sheftel for the disagreement, telling reporters outside the courthouse Thursday that the Israeli lawyer was under tremendous pressure as a Jew who is seen by his peers as defending “an alleged mass murderer” of his people.

“Mr. Sheftel is just breaking under the pressure psychologically,” O’Conner said.

Sheftel, indicating that he did not want to be drawn into a public argument with O’Conner, said he was concerned that all the bickering was damaging to Demjanjuk’s defense.

Judge Dov Levin, who has had several testy exchanges with O’Conner, alluded to the dissension Thursday when he called on the defense and added dryly, “Whoever gets up, gets up.”

O’Connor got up, and announced that he will move Monday for dismissal of the case against Demjanjuk. The motion is expected to be denied, with the trial then recessing for several weeks before Demjanjuk takes the stand as the first defense witness.

‘Greater Detail’

“John is going to give in greater detail exactly where he was” during the period when the prosecution alleges he worked as a guard at the Treblinka death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, O’Conner said.

Demjanjuk, a Soviet soldier from the Ukraine who was captured by the Germans early in the war, maintains that he was never at Treblinka.

Much of the testimony so far has dealt with the Nazi identity card said by the prosecution to have been issued to Demjanjuk at Treblinka, where he is alleged to have been trained as a camp guard, along with other Russian collaborators.

The defense maintains that the card, furnished by Soviet authorities, is a forgery designed to discredit Ukrainians like Demjanjuk who emigrated to the United States after World War II.

Cantu, who was hired by the prosecution, testified that the identity card’s ink and paper match known samples from the early 1940s.

‘Could Not Detect Fraud’

“I found no evidence to suggest it was made after 1942,” he said. “Everything I found in the ink and the paper was consistent with materials available in 1942. Every attempt to detect fraud by the pillars of forensic science did not come through in this case. I could not detect fraud.”

But under cross-examination by Gill, Cantu admitted that his tests showed only that the paper and ink used to make the card were manufactured before 1942. He conceded that if a forger had a stock of paper and ink from that period, he could falsify a document that would appear from chemical analysis to be genuine.