The Man Without a Country: The Just Deserts of John Demjanjuk
![handle is hein.journals/lla28 and id is 793 raw text is: THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY: THE JUST
DESERTS OF JOHN DEMJANJUK
I. INTRODUCTION
In 1979 the United States Attorney General, Benjamin R. Civi-
letti, created the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and charged it
with the sole responsibility of identifying and denaturalizing Nazi war
criminals.1 Of the many cases brought by OSI, few are as emotionally
charged as that of John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker from Cleve-
land, Ohio. OSI identified Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible,2 a noto-
rious Nazi concentration camp guard. This identification led to the
revocation of Demjanjuk's United States citizenship.3 Subsequently,
Israel extradited Demjanjuk to prosecute him for his alleged role in
the Holocaust.4 The Israeli prosecution introduced original Nazi doc-
umentation that placed Demjanjuk at various concentration camps
and offered many eyewitnesses who identified him as Ivan the Terri-
ble.5 The Israeli trial court found Demjanjuk guilty and sentenced
1. Comment, Denaturalization of Nazi War Criminals: Is There Sufficient Justice for
Those Who Would Not Dispense Justice?, 40 MD. L. REv. 39,43 (1981) [hereinafter Denat-
uralization of Nazi War Criminals] (citing Order of the Attorney General, Transfer of
Functions of the Special Litigation Unit Within the Immigration and Naturalization Ser-
vice of the Department of Justice to the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice,
No. 851-79, (Sept. 4,1979)). The OSI replaced the Special Litigation Unit of the Immigra-
tion and Naturalization Service as a result of strong congressional pressure stemming from
insufficient prosecutions by the Special Litigation Unit. Id at 42-43. In fact, the Special
Litigation Unit arose from congressional concern that the U.S. government employed and
harbored Nazi war criminals following the Second World War through some time in the
mid-1960s. Alleged Nazi War Criminals: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Immigration,
Citizenship, and International Law of the House Comm. on the Judiciary, 95th Cong., 2d
Sess. 40-52 (1978) (statement of Charles R. Allen, Jr., researcher and author on Nazi war
criminals). Prior to the creation of the Special Litigation Unit, the United States made no
effort to bring these people to justice. Id.
2. Ivan the Terrible is a sadistic Treblinka concentration camp guard. Robert E. Her-
stein, The 'Arch Henchmen', N.Y. TIMEs, Nov. 25, 1990, § 7, at 6. He has been accused of
torturing Jewish inmates with a wood drill, operating the gas chambers in which thousands
died, and general cruelty to incoming inmates. United States v. Demjanjuk, 518 F. Supp.
1362, 1370 (N.D. Ohio 1981), aff'd, 680 F.2d 32 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1036
(1982).
3. Demianjuk, 518 F. Supp. at 1386.
4. Demjanjuk v. Petrovsky, 776 F.2d 571, 575 (6th Cir. 1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S.
1016 (1986).
5. ToM TEiCHOLZ, THE TRIAL OF IVAN THE TERRIBLE: STATE OF ISRAEL VS. JOHN
DEMJANJUK 4 (1990).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/lla28&div=38&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Man Without a Country: The Just Deserts of John Demjanjuk
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