Justice Dept. Had Documents That May Aid Demjanjuk : War crimes: 1978 files contain references to man named Marchenko, who convicted Nazi’s backers say is the Treblinka death camp’s ‘Ivan the Terrible.’

The Justice Department had in its files in 1978, but did not disclose, references to a man whom defenders of John Demjanjuk claim was actually the “Ivan the Terrible” at the Treblinka death camp, Assistant Atty. Gen. Robert S. Mueller III disclosed Friday.

In the department’s first formal statement on the Demjanjuk case since his Israeli death sentence came under serious challenge, Mueller said the department’s internal watchdog unit was probing “serious issues of prosecutorial misconduct.”

But so far, said Mueller, who heads the department’s criminal division, no misconduct has been revealed in connection with the newly disclosed material. The references were in the files of another accused Treblinka guard, Feodor Fedorenko, who was stripped of his U.S. citizenship, deported to the Soviet Union in 1984 and later executed as a Nazi collaborator.

“We are guided by a single objective,” Mueller said: “To see that justice is done and that the law is scrupulously enforced.”

The man known as Ivan the Terrible operated the gas chamber at the Treblinka death camp and tortured Jews.

Demjanjuk is a retired Cleveland auto worker who was convicted of war crimes in Israel after he was denaturalized and extradited by the United States. In addition to looking into the case of Demjanjuk, the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility recently intensified its investigation of the case of Andrija Artukovic, a Seal Beach, Calif., man who died in a Yugoslav prison in 1988.

Both cases were handled by the department’s Office of Special Investigations, which pursues former concentration camp guards and others with Nazi service who lied about their backgrounds when admitted to the United States. Artukovic was minister of interior in a Nazi puppet government in wartime Croatia that carried out the execution of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies.

Defenders of Artukovic and Demjanjuk contend that the Office of Special Investigations ignored evidence casting doubt on some allegations in its zeal to remove their citizenship and deport them, allegations that OSI Director Neal M. Sher has denied.

The references disclosed Friday by Mueller were among material obtained by the United States in August, 1978, in connection with Fedorenko’s case and “were apparently maintained in the Fedorenko files from that point forward,” Mueller said. Demjanjuk was stripped of his citizenship in 1981 and extradited to Israel five years later. The material was not turned over to his lawyers.

One of the references is an excerpt of a Feb. 21, 1945, Soviet interrogation of Pavel V. Leieko, a Ukranian who served as a guard at the Treblinka camp in Poland.

Leieko identified two men who he said operated motors that fed gases into the gas chambers, which the Nazis represented as a bath house. One of the men had the name Marchenko, which is the last name of a man Demjanjuk’s defenders have identified as Ivan the Terrible.

Leieko said: “Marchenko and Nikolay, the motorists of the gas chambers shouted: ‘Walk faster, or the water will become cold!’ ”

In a second reference, Leieko said: “The Germans and the motor operators then competed as to atrocities with regard to the people to be killed. Marchenko, for instance, had a sword with which he mutilated people.”

Leieko also described “Marchenko and Nikolay” starting the motors of the gas chamber and looking in through portholes to observe victims “writhing (and) crushing each other.”

Another reference to Marchenko was included in a March 18, 1978, interrogation of Nikolay Petrovich Malagon, a Ukranian who served as a Treblinka guard after being captured by the Nazis.

In the questioning, conducted by a Soviet prosecutor at the request of the United States in the Fedorenko case, Malagon described a “Nikolay Marchenko” as a guard “near the diesel engines by the gas chambers.” He said that Marchenko carried a pistol and “did exterminate prisoners.”

Neither of the newly discovered documents mentions Demjanjuk by name. In March, 1991, ueller noted, the Israelis obtained copies of 21 statements made by former Treblinka camp guards to Soviet interrogators between 1944 and 1961, relating to the presence of a Marchenko at the death camp. The statements included the two found to have been in the Justice Department’s Fedorenko file.

But the material is far from conclusive. Along with Mueller’s statement, the Justice Department released immigration documents in which Demjanjuk listed his mother’s maiden name as Olga Martschenko. A department official said the name could be Marchenko as translated from Cyrllic.

And Mueller pointed out in his statement that Demjanjuk’s denaturalization order was based only partially on charges that he was the notorious Ivan. His service at an SS training camp and in a German military unit also figured in the ruling, he said.

Mueller also cited evidence uncovered by Israeli authorities that shows Demjanjuk had been assigned to the Sobibor death camp and later to the Flossenburg concentration camp. He mentioned none of these in his immigration papers. Such misrepresentations are the basis for Office of Special Investigations action to remove citizenship and deport immigrants.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati last week reopened the question of whether it should have blocked Demjanjuk’s extradition to Israel, saying its action may have been based on “erroneous information.”

It ordered the Justice Department to turn over by July 15 any evidence that tends to show Demjanjuk is not Ivan the Terrible and to detail when U.S. agents first learned of each such item of evidence.