Dreyfus Link to Demjanjuk Irks Israel Court

The court exploded in anger today as a lawyer for accused Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk compared the retired U.S. auto worker’s trial to the notorious case of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer in France falsely accused of treason in 1894.

Defense attorney Paul Chumak made the analogy to the case that was laced with anti-Semitism in summations in the trial of Demjanjuk, 67, a native Ukrainian accused of being the sadistic Treblinka death camp guard “Ivan the Terrible.”

Chumak spent much of the day arguing the war crimes trial was built on clever forgeries by the Soviet KGB, which he said conspired to frame Demjanjuk and widen rifts between the Ukrainian and Jewish peoples.

Court Caution Urged

“The court must act with great caution to protect the rights of the accused,” said Chumak, a former Canadian prosecutor from Toronto. “Capt. Dreyfus was convicted at the beginning of this century on false documents on a wave of anti-Semitism, and paralleling this with anti-Ukrainianism, this trial has all the earmarks of the Dreyfus trial.”

Spectators in the courtroom hissed and Chief Judge Dov Levin responded angrily, suggesting several times that Chumak withdraw the statement.

“This statement in Israel, in a court in Israel, the way you formulate it, has very severe repercussions and I think it was very unbecoming,” the judge said. “In the understanding of the Jewish people the Dreyfus trial has a very clear meaning.”

Dreyfus Exonerated

A French military court using fake evidence convicted Dreyfus of treason in 1894. Dreyfus was cleared after spending 12 years in a Devil’s Island prison.

Chumak said he did not mention the Dreyfus case to intimidate the three-judge panel, but warned that the outcome of Demjanjuk’s year-old trial could reflect on the “nature and quality of Israeli justice.”

“Are you threatening us, sir?” responded Judge Dalia Dorner. “What you say amounts to a threat. I beseech you to drop this argument in all its entirety.”

The defense attorney and judges argued about the Dreyfus analogy for about 30 minutes. At Chumak’s request, the trial was recessed until Thursday.