Demjanjuk Is Expected to Arrive in Ukraine Today

John Demjanjuk, acquitted in Israel of being the Nazi concentration camp guard “Ivan the Terrible,” is expected to arrive today in Ukraine, the land of his birth.

Demjanjuk will be released after 7 1/2 years in an Israeli jail and put on a direct flight to Kiev, Israeli police officials said. The plan would change only if the Israeli Supreme Court, meeting today, bows to demands that Demjanjuk be tried on other war crimes charges.

Demjanjuk’s supporters said Saturday that they fear extremists may try to kill him in Ukraine.

“I have talked to senior officials in the Ukrainian government who say that they cannot guarantee his safety,” Michael I. Dragan, coordinator for Demjanjuk’s U.S. supporters, said in a telephone interview from Fairfield, Conn.

Although acquitted of being the notorious Ivan who manned the gas chambers at the Treblinka camp, the 73-year-old former U.S. auto worker could be prosecuted in Ukraine on suspicion of being a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp, under a Soviet law against Nazi collaborators.

But Demjanjuk’s innocence has been championed by anti-Semitic groups and ultranationalists here, and it is unclear whether Ukraine would risk inflaming the nation’s historic anti-Semitism by trying an acquitted man under a Soviet-era law.

Demjanjuk is expected to live with supporters in Kiev, pending a decision on whether he can return to his home in Cleveland. On Thursday, the U.S. State Department said that as a suspected Nazi guard, Demjanjuk would not be permitted to enter the United States.

Dragan said that Demjanjuk’s petition to return to the United States would receive an oral hearing in a Cincinnati court Tuesday.