Demjanjuk Blasts Witnesses Who Said ‘Ivan’ Was Dead in ’45 but Alive in ’88

John Demjanjuk angrily grabbed the microphone today at his war crimes trial and, speaking in Hebrew, told a Holocaust survivor who had changed his story and identified him as a Nazi guard: “You are a liar.”

Demjanjuk was responding to Eliyahu Rosenberg, who pointed and said the retired Ohio auto worker was the sadistic guard “Ivan the Terrible,” despite a recently discovered 1945 statement in which Rosenberg claimed to have seen Ivan clubbed to death.

“If Ivan were dead, he wouldn’t be sitting across from me grinning,” Rosenberg said animatedly. “I know him as Ivan, not as Demjanjuk. This is Ivan . . . this creature.”

Demjanjuk, red-faced and shaking, lurched for a microphone sitting at the edge of a table and said loudly: “Mr. Rosenberg, ata shakran, shakran, shakran, “ meaning, “You are a liar, liar, liar.” It was the second time Demjanjuk has made such an accusation against Rosenberg, who is 67.

Presiding Judge Dov Levine said Demjanjuk’s remark would be entered into the record.

Demjanjuk, 67, is accused of being a Nazi guard at the Treblinka death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland from 1942 to 1943. Survivors say the brutal “Ivan” took particular delight in beating and torturing his victims with a whip. About 850,000 Jews died in Treblinka while Ivan ran the gas chambers.

Demjanjuk claims that he is a victim of mistaken identity. His 11-month trial is currently in closing arguments, which were interrupted when the court agreed to a defense request to recall Rosenberg.

Discovered Last Week

The Treblinka survivor identified Demjanjuk in the spring as Ivan, after asking to step close to him to see his eyes and recoiling when Demjanjuk offered his hand. At that time, Demjanjuk also called Rosenberg a liar.

The defense wanted Rosenberg recalled to question him about new evidence, a handwritten statement in Yiddish which Rosenberg made at the end of World War II. The defense discovered the statement last week in an archive in Warsaw.

In the statement, Rosenberg wrote: “We went to the engine room where Ivan was sleeping, and Gustav (another prisoner) hit him with a shovel on the head. And there he remained, lying for eternity.”

Defense attorney Paul Chumak today asked Rosenberg: “Sir, how could you possibly come to this court and point a finger at this gentleman when you wrote in 1945 Ivan was dead, killed by Gustav?”

Rosenberg replied: “But he’s here. He’s alive. I’m seeing him.”

Then, Rosenberg and Demjanjuk looked at each other across the courtroom and both men laughed, prompting murmurs among the 600 spectators.

Rosenberg said what he wrote in 1945 was based on what he was told by other inmates after an August, 1943, inmate uprising at Treblinka.