Demjanjuk Sentenced to Hang for War Crimes : Deeds as ‘Ivan’ Can’t Be Forgiven, Court Says; Israelis Exult

Declaring that certain deeds “can never be forgiven in law or in the hearts of men,” a Jerusalem court Monday sentenced retired Cleveland auto worker John Demjanjuk to death by hanging for World War II crimes at the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland.

The sentence, only the second death penalty pronounced in Israel’s 40-year history, was greeted by prolonged applause, dancing and singing in the converted theater that has served for the last 14 months as Demjanjuk’s courtroom.

Treblinka Survivors Weep

“The Nation of Israel Lives!” the joyous spectators sang while three Treblinka survivors, who had identified Demjanjuk as the cruel camp guard known as “Ivan the Terrible,” wept in the front row.

The condemned man reacted to the decision with an almost imperceptible shake of his head but was otherwise expressionless.

In convicting him a week ago, the court concluded--”unequivocally, without the slightest doubt”--that Demjanjuk, 68, is Ivan. The burly, bespectacled Ukrainian, who emigrated to the United States and settled in the Cleveland area in 1952, maintains that he is the victim of mistaken identity.

Wheeled Into Court

“I am innocent!” he shouted in Hebrew as he was wheeled into the courtroom early Monday afternoon to hear Judge Zvi Tal pronounce sentence. Demjanjuk was in a wheelchair because of persistent back problems.

The sentence means that the verdict will now go automatically before the country’s High Court of Appeals under an Israeli law that provides for such a review in any case involving capital punishment.

The condemned man’s son, John Demjanjuk Jr., termed the decision an “injustice” that will “shame the Israeli government, the Israeli Justice Department, the U.S. Justice Department and, most unfortunately, the 6 million murdered in the Holocaust.”

Demjanjuk was extradited from the United States to Israel in February, 1986, to face the Jewish state’s first war crimes trial since that of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was convicted of masterminding Nazi Germany’s systematic extermination of 6 million European Jews and was hanged in 1962. His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered in the Mediterranean Sea.

The three-judge panel that heard Demjanjuk’s case deliberated the sentence for more than three hours. Reading their decision, Judge Tal acknowledged that “almost 50 years have elapsed since Treblinka. We have established a new life, and we ask ourselves if time alleviates the crime; if time dulls the pain, and a person who has changed his course in life need not be punished as harshly.

‘Can Never Be Forgiven’

“This holds true for some crimes,” Tal said, “but not for those listed in the verdict. . . . These crimes can never be forgiven in law or in the hearts of men. These crimes can never be obliterated from memory. It is as though Treblinka continues to exist, as though the blood of the victims still cries out to us.”

The court ruled last week that Demjanjuk operated the gas chambers at Treblinka in which about 850,000 individuals, most of them Jews, were put to death.

“We have not heard any extenuating circumstances from the defense,” Tal said. And while acknowledging “the perils of an irrevocable sentence,” he reminded the court of the sweeping certainty with which the panel had last week found Demjanjuk guilty. “In light of all the above, we sentence him to the punishment of death,” Tal said.

Citing the Eichmann precedent, chief prosecutor Yona Blattman had argued earlier that the death penalty was mandatory under Israel’s Nazi and Nazi Collaborators Act--a position that Chief Judge Dov Levin rejected.

‘Accused Was No Small Cog’

“The accused stood at the gateway to the inferno and went about his duties with unparalleled zeal and enthusiasm,” Blattman argued in support of capital punishment. “The accused was no small cog. He was a major criminal against humanity. . . . He committed the most heinous acts with his very own hands, killing hundreds of thousands of people with utmost brutality.”

As Blattman spoke, Demjanjuk, a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox (Christian) Church, crossed himself several times.

In his counterargument, chief defense attorney John Gill cited several instances in which people have been executed for crimes it was later learned they did not commit. New evidence continues to emerge related to his client’s case, Gill said, and that presented during the trial “did not meet the required level of exactness needed to impose the death penalty.”

“The taking of any innocent human life is a holocaust,” Gill added, to the obvious displeasure of the bench.

Concedes There Was an Ivan

Speaking briefly in his native Ukrainian, Demjanjuk said in his own defense that it was “very painful for me to sit here and hear the terrible tragedy that befell the Jewish people.” He said he has no argument that “the atrocities perpetuated at Treblinka did take place, that there is a hangman named Ivan, and he did brutalize the people.”

However, Demjanjuk added, the court had made “a very grave mistake, because I am not ‘Ivan the Terrible’. . . . I do not deserve this. I am innocent, innocent, innocent, as God is my witness.”

Trial spokesman Yossi Hasin said the date for the automatic appeal of the Demjanjuk verdict is uncertain. However, he noted, in order to give both prosecution and defense enough time to review the 444-page verdict and prepare arguments, it is unlikely that an appellate court will begin proceedings until at least the summer.