On 13 July 2009, prosecutors charged him with 27,900counts of accessory to murder for his time as a guard at Sobibor. With five years of careful review into thousands of Trawniki-related documents that had been unavailable before 1991, OSI investigators could track through wartime documents Demjanjuk's entire career as a Trawniki-trained guard and as a concentration camp guard from 1942 to 1945. Demjanjuk's US citizenship was reinstated and he returned to the States, where he went back to living his family life. The German jurisdictional authority rested on the murder of people brought to Sobibor on 15 transport trains from the Westerbork camp in the Netherlands between April and July 1943, among whom were individual German citizens who had fled to Holland in the 1930s. All rights reserved. Shortly before his death, he was tried and convicted in Germany as an accessory to 28,060 murders at Sobibor. Vera, also from Ukraine, told Cleveland.com that she lived through World War II and famine. Danil'chenko had stated that he knew Demjanjuk from their service together in Sobibor and at the Flossenbrg concentration camp until 1945. "[77] It was later learned that Eliyahu Rosenberg had previously testified in a 1947 deposition that "Ivan the Terrible" had been killed in 1943 during a Treblinka prisoner uprising. [117] The German foreign ministry announced on 2 April 2009 that Demjanjuk would be transferred to Germany the following week,[118] and would face trial beginning 30 November 2009. Ten petitions against the decision were made to the Supreme Court. [137] Busch also alleged that the trial violated the principle of double jeopardy due to the previous trial in Israel. He and Vera had three children: John Jr., Irene, and Lydia, CBS reported. [90] The judges agreed that Demjanjuk most likely served as a Nazi Wachmann (guard) in the Trawniki unit[88] and had been posted at Sobibor extermination camp and two other camps. The photos, said Cueppers, are a quantum leap in the visual record on the Holocaust in occupied Poland.. One year later, in December 2005, a US Immigration Court ordered Demjanjuk deported to his native Ukraine. Accused of being Ivan the Terrible, a sadistic guard who beat and tortured camp prisoners, according to survivor testimony, Demjanjuk was found guilty and sentenced to death. [76], On April18, 1988, the Jerusalem District Court found Demjanjuk "unhesitatingly and with utter conviction" guilty of all charges and being Ivan the Terrible. The Jerusalem Post Customer Service Center can be contacted with any questions or requests: Sign up for The Jerusalem Post Premium Plus for just $5, Upgrade your reading experience with an ad-free environment and exclusive content, Copyright 2023 Jpost Inc. All rights reserved. "[5] Although the judges agreed that there was sufficient evidence to show that Demjanjuk had served at Sobibor, Israel declined to prosecute. [18] According to German records, Demjanjuk most likely arrived at Trawniki concentration camp to be trained as a camp guard for the Nazis on 13 June 1942. [22] His application stated that he had worked as a driver in the town of Sobibr in eastern Poland. [41] Demjanjuk appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which on 30 April 2004 ruled that Demjanjuk could be again stripped of his US citizenship because the Justice Department had presented "clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence" of Demjanjuk's service in Nazi death camps. | He was sent back to Trawniki and on 26 March 1943 he was assigned to Sobibor concentration camp. "[85], Demjanjuk further claimed that in 1944 he was drafted into an anti-Soviet Russian military organization, the Russian Liberation Army (Vlasov Army), funded by the Nazi German government, until the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies in 1945. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine The son of famed John Demjanjuk has dismissed the claim that newly emerged photos of the Sobibor death camp show his father performing duties as a guard. [108] The United States Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in November 2004.[109]. When asked to identify Demjanjuk in the courtroom, however, Nagorny was unable to, stating "That's definitely not him no resemblance. [92], The judge's acquittal of Demjanjuk for being Ivan the Terrible was based on the written statements of 37former guards at Treblinka that identified Ivan the Terrible as "Ivan Marchenko". However, Demjanjuk's family, who had always claimed he was a Ukrainian prisoner of war, and that the accusations were simply a case of mistaken identity, had fought vigorously to prevent his deportation to Germany, defended him, and stood by his side until his death. He settled in Seven Hills, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, and worked for many years in a Ford auto plant. Nevertheless, blood-type tattooing was never consistently implemented. The file on Demjanjuk was compiled by the German Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes. [78] During the trial, Demjanjuk was again identified on the photo spread by Otto Horn, a former German SS guard at Treblinka. This was considered circumstantial corroboration of Hanusiak's claims, but its agents were unable to find witnesses in the US who could identify Demjanjuk. [86], Following closing statements, the defense also submitted the statement of Ignat Danilchenko, information which had been obtained through the US Freedom of Information but had not previously been made available to the defense by OSI. These documents placed Demjanjuk at the Sobibor killing center as of March 26, 1943, and at the Flossenbrg concentration camp as of October 1, 1943. [26][27] There he met Vera Kowlowa, another DP, and they married. Prosecutors claimed that Demjanjuk volunteered to collaborate with the Germans and was sent to the camp at Trawniki, where he was trained to guard prisoners as part of Operation Reinhard. [168], The 1989 film Music Box, directed by Costa-Gavras, is based in part on the Demjanjuk case. In August 1977, Demjanjuk was accused of having been a Trawniki man. The US extradited him to Israel, where his conviction as Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka killing center was reversed on appeal. According to the Los Angeles Times, he admitted he had been drafted into the Soviet Army in 1941 and held as a prisoner of war in Germany and Poland, but denied the grave accusations leveled against him. . One month after the US Supreme Court's refusal to hear Demjanjuk's case, on 19 June 2008, Germany announced it would seek the extradition of Demjanjuk to Germany. Cookie Policy [136] Busch would also allege that the German justice system was prejudiced against his client, and that the entire trial was therefore illegitimate. Newly released picture may prove John Demjanjuk, who lived in Seven Hills, was a Nazi death camp guard, US Marshals find 14-year-old Cleveland girl missing since July in Columbus with 41-year-old man, 3 men shot at Hookah Lounge in Summit County, US Marshals: 31-year-old Cleveland man wanted for raping child over 2-year span, Netflix has docu-series on John Demjanjuk, the accused Nazi guard who lived in Northeast Ohio, Closed Captioning/Audio Description Problems. [61] Demjanjuk was deported to Israel on 28 February 1986. They married and were still living in the camps in the 1950s when she gave birth to Lydia. Terms of Use In July 2009, German prosecutors indicted Demjanjuk on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder at Sobibor. He's the subject of Netflix's new documentary, The Devil Next Door.. [139] On 30 November 2009, Demjanjuk's trial, expected to last for several months, began in Munich. Investigations of Demjanjuk's Holocaust-era past began in 1975. (Other reports say they have seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.). [101], Demjanjuk was released to return to the United States. Danilchenko was a former guard at Sobibor and had been deposed by the Soviet Union in 1979 at the request of the OSI (US Office of Special Investigations). [38], Given that eyewitnesses attested to Demjanjuk having been Ivan the Terrible at Treblinka, decades before, whereas documentary evidence seemed to indicate that he had served at Sobibor with little notoriety, OSI considered dropping the proceeding against Demjanjuk to focus on higher profile cases. [116] Some three months later, on 11 March 2009, Demjanjuk was charged with more than 29,000counts of accessory to murder of Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor extermination camp. [180] It has digitized this collection for research. [142], On 14 April 2010, Anton Dallmeyer, an expert witness, testified that the typeset and handwriting on an ID card being used as key evidence matched four other ID cards believed to have been issued at the SS training camp at Trawniki. On 19 May 2008, the US Supreme Court denied Demjanjuk's petition for certiorari, declining to hear his case against the deportation order. [34] Hanusiak claimed that Demjanjuk had been a guard at Sobibor concentration and death camp. The evidence placing him at Sobibor was consistent with the information on Demjanjuk's Trawniki identification card and with Danil'chenko's testimony. You have no heartnothing!, After Demjanjuk died in 2012, Vera Demjanjuk was still saying that the Justice Department had done a dirty job, Cleveland.com reported. He was deported to Germany, where prosecutors presented various pieces of evidence suggesting Demjanjuk was one of the Trawniki MenSoviet prisoners of war who were recruited by the Nazis to work as guards at the Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka killing centers. He fought in World War II and was taken prisoner by the Germans in spring 1942. Demjanjuk's denial related both to the supposed operation of a truck's diesel engine by "Ivan the Terrible" for the gas chamber at Treblinka and to the SS's singling out of Ukrainians with experience driving trucks as Trawniki men. After a required hearing, US authorities extradited Demjanjuk to Israel to stand trial on charges of crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity. [76] The most important of these was Eliyahu Rosenberg. On Tuesday, experts speaking at Berlins Topography of Terror museum presented a previously unseen collection of 361 photos that once belonged to Johann Niemann, deputy commander of Sobibor between September 1942 and October 1943. Upon his arrival, he was arrested and sent to Munich's Stadelheim prison. In the records of the former Ukrainian KGB in Kiev, the Demjanjuk defense team found dozens of statements of former Treblinka guards whom Soviet authorities had tried in the early 1960s. Although Demjanjuk died before a German appeals court could review his conviction, German prosecutors successfully prosecuted subsequent cases against killing center and concentration camp guards using the same theory tested in the Demjanjuk case. In a second photograph, researchers identify one man as Demjanjuk, but another man has a prominent left ear much like what is seen on Demjanjuks Nazi ID card. When Demjanjuk smiled and offered his hand, Rosenberg recoiled and shouted "Grozny!" [55] Others, particularly American Jews, were outraged by the presence of Demjanjuk in the United States and vocally supported his deportation. In 1979, the newly created Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the DOJ took over prosecution of the case. Previously, historians knew of only two photos taken at Sobibor while it was still operational; the camp was dismantled after a prisoner revolt in 1943. Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics, Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically, Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust, Explore the ID Cards to learn more about personal experiences during the Holocaust. View the list of all donors. March 17, 2012. During this trial, the evidence implicating Demjanjuk rested not on survivor testimony, but on wartime documentation of his service at Sobibor. [179] The Niemann family has donated the originals to the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. As Chelm was Demjanjuk's alibi, he was questioned about this omission during the trial by both the prosecutors and the judges; Demjanjuk blamed the trauma of his POW experience and said he had simply forgotten. In 1988, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death. US officials had originally been aware, without informing Demjanjuk's attorneys, of the testimony of two of these German guards. On Demjanjuk's return to Seven Hills after the acquittal, the family gave Mike Conway, then a reporter for WJW-TV in Cleveland, the exclusive right to broadcast images of Demjanjuk back in the bosom of his loving family. On May 19, 2008, the US Supreme Court declined to review his appeal. "[47] Additionally, OSI submitted the testimony of former SS guard Horn identifying Demjanjuk as having been at Treblinka. It is Ivan from Treblinka, from the gas chambers, the man I am looking at now." [84] Demjanjuk also changed his testimony as to why he had listed Sobibor as his place of domicile from his earlier trials: he now claimed to have been advised to do so by an official of the United Nations Relief Administration to list a place in Poland or Czechoslovakia in order to avoid repatriation to the Soviet Union, after which another Soviet refugee waiting with him suggested Demjanjuk list Sobibor. Conscripted into the Soviet army, he was captured by German troops at the battle of Kerch in May 1942. Born in Ukraine in 1920, Demjanjuk emigrated to the United States in 1952 and settled with his family in Cleveland. [37] While the government was preparing for trial, Hanusiak published pictures of an ID card identifying Demjanjuk as having been a Trawniki man and guard at Sobibor in News from Ukraine. [49] The defense also submitted the statement of Feodor Fedorenko, a Ukrainian guard at Treblinka, which stated that Fedorenko could not recall having seen Demjanjuk at Treblinka. While interviews with Demjanjuk's family portray him as an innocent family man unfairly maligned, the evidence against him is haunting. To the end, Demjanjuk denied that he had ever stepped foot in the Nazi extermination camp. A new show on Netlfix, "Devil Next Door" is about John Demjanjuk. He and Vera had three children: John Jr., Irene, and Lydia, CBS reported. The trials of John Demjanjuk have attracted global media attention for three decades. The prosecution called expert witnesses to testify on the authenticity of the card including its signatures by various Nazi officers, paper, and ink. On 14 November 1958, Demjanjuk became a naturalized citizen of the United States and legally changed his name from Ivan to John. "I say it unhesitatingly, without the slightest shadow of a doubt. [134] The indictment made almost no mention of Demjanjuk's service at Majdanek or Flossenbrg, as these were not extermination camps. The case had begun as an investigation into the Sobibor camp, due to Demjanjuk's alleged service at that killing center and to the testimony of a Soviet witness named Ignat' Danil'chenko in the late 1940s. The defense argued that Demjanjuk had never been a guard, but that if he had been that he had had no choice in the matter. He was assigned to a manorial estate called Okzow on 22 September 1942, but returned to Trawniki on 14 October. [43] During the trial, Demjanjuk admitted to having lied on his US visa application but claimed that it was out of fear of being returned to the Soviet Union and denied having been a concentration camp guard. Sheftel focused the defense largely on the claim that Demjanjuk's Trawniki card was a KGB forgery. [143] The prosecution also produced orders to a man identified as Demjanjuk to go to Sobibor and other records to show that Demjanjuk had served as a guard there. For the first time in a German case, prosecutors argued that a guard at a facility whose sole purpose was mass murder shared responsibility for the deaths of those killed during his service there. [48] Although Demjanjuk's Trawniki card only documented that he had been at Sobibor, the prosecution argued that he could have shuttled between the camps and that Treblinka had been omitted due to administrative sloppiness. meaning "Terrible" in Polish and Russian. Its investigation reduced the list to nine individuals, including Demjanjuk. In his third declaration Demjanjuk demanded access to a secret KGB file numbered 1627 and declared a hunger strike until he got it. [21], After the end of the war, Demjanjuk spent time in several displaced persons (DP) camps in Germany. (The nearby Sobibor extermination camp was named after the village. [66] According to prosecutors, Demjanjuk had been recruited into the Soviet army in 1940, and had fought until he was captured by German troops in Eastern Crimea in May 1942. Cookie Settings, Five Places Where You Can Still Find Gold in the United States, Scientists Taught Pet Parrots to Video Call Each Otherand the Birds Loved It, Balto's DNA Provides a New Look at the Intrepid Sled Dog, The Science of California's 'Super Bloom,' Visible From Space, What We're Still Learning About Rosalind Franklins Unheralded Brilliance. While living in the United States, he was married to Vera Demjanjuk and they had three children. He was freed pending appeal of the conviction. The son of famed John Demjanjuk has dismissed the claim that newly emerged photos of the Sobibor death camp show his father performing duties as a guard. After the war he married a woman he met in a West German displaced persons camp, and emigrated with her and their daughter to the United States. [106] The complaint alleged that Demjanjuk served as a guard at the Sobibr and Majdanek camps in Poland under German occupation and as a member of an SS death's head battalion at Flossenbrg. "[148] As Nagorny had previously identified Demjanjuk from his US visa application photo, his inability to recognize Demjanjuk in the courtroom was seen as unimportant. Here is what you need to know about Vera. Demjanjuk also said, "Your Honors, if I had really been in that terrible place, would I have been stupid enough to say so? [45][46] Five Holocaust survivors from Treblinka identified Demjanjuk as having been at Treblinka and having been "Ivan the Terrible. Upon receiving these files, and after years of litigation, Demjanjuk's American defense team filed a suit against the US government to set aside the judgment stripping him of his citizenship, and accused the OSI of prosecutorial misconduct. On May 12, 2011, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. In August 1977, Demjanjuk was accused of having been a Trawniki man. [124] The same day, Demjanjuk's son filed a motion in the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit asking that the deportation be stayed,[124] which was subsequently granted. Such a proceeding became possible upon the discovery of internal Trawniki training camp personnel correspondence in the Archives of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation in Moscow. Ukrainian guard at Nazi death camps (19202012), Loss of US citizenship and extradition to Israel, Verdict and Israeli Supreme Court reversal, Second loss of US citizenship and extradition to Germany, Death and posthumous efforts to restore US citizenship, Subsequent prosecutions of Nazi extermination camp guards in Germany, US Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law, United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, United Nations Convention against Torture, Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, List of denaturalized former citizens of the United States, "Seven Hills' John Demjanjuk, convicted Nazi guard, dies in Bavaria at 91", "Israeli judge: Demjanjuk was 'Ivan the Terrible', "Israel recommends that Demjanjuk be released", "John Demjanjuk, 91, dogged by charges of atrocities as Nazi camp guard, dies", "Convicted Nazi Criminal Demjanjuk Deemed Innocent in Germany Over Technicality", "John Demjanjuk: Things we are left to tend to think", "Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk dies aged 91", "Anger simmers in Demjanjuk's home village", " :: ", "Looking Back on the Demjanjuk Trial in Munich", "Sixty years later, alleged Nazi guard may stand trial", "Convicted Nazi criminal John Demjanjuk dies at 91", "Judge Rules Autoworker Must Lose Citizenship for Falsifying Past", "Nazi Deportation Trial Centers on Identity Card", "Defense Rests in Trial of Alleged Nazi Guard", "Ex-Nazi Suspect Loses Immigration Court Case", "Man Accused of Nazi Crimes to be Extradited to Israel", "John Demjanjuk: Prosecution of a Nazi collaborator", "Demjanjuk quoted: Guards only followed orders", "2nd witness calls Demjanjuk 'Ivan the Terrible', "Acquittal in Jerusalem; Israel court sets Demjanjuk free, but he is now without a country", "KGB evidence reopens the case of 'Ivan the Terrible': Holocaust: Recently released files bolster the appeal of the man convicted as a Nazi death camp monster", "Why Nazi trials must end: The story behind the likely acquittal of", "Decision of Israel Supreme Court on petition concerning John (Ivan) Demjanjuk", "Judge orders accused camp guard deported", "Accused Nazi guard Demjanjuk loses court appeal", "Germany seeks extradition of Nazi guard from US", "Court: 'Ivan the Terrible' can be tried in Germany", "Former Nazi camp guard charged 29,000times", "Former Nazi camp guard to be deported to Germany", "John Demjanjuk's trial in Germany to start 30 November", "U.S. judge allows deportation of accused Nazi guard", "Nazi suspect's deportation appeal rejected", "Demjanjuk removed from Ohio home on stretcher", "Nazi war crimes suspect granted emergency stay", "Alleged Nazi guard Demjanjuk hits legal brick wall", "Demjanjuk loses German court bid to block deportation", "Krankenwagen bringt Demjanjuk ins Untersuchungsgefngnis", "Germany files charges against alleged Nazi guard Demjanjuk", "Demjanjuk lawyer calls for case to be closed", "John Demjanjuk war crimes trial begins in Munich", "Man Tied to Death Camp Goes on Trial in Germany", "John Demjanjuk, 91, Dogged by Charges of Atrocities as Nazi Camp Guard, Dies", "Witness in alleged Nazi Demjanjuk trial under investigation for murder", "German court rejects Demjanjuk extradition request", "Demjanjuk convicted of helping Nazis to murder Jews during the Holocaust", "John Demjanjuk zu fnf Jahren Haft verurteilt", "Court finds Nazi camp guard guilty of assisting in Holocaust deaths", "Former US citizen convicted in Nazi camp deaths", "Convicted Nazi criminal Demjanjuk deemed innocent in Germany over technicality", "Demjanjuk family asks to bury Nazi war criminal in US", "Ukrainian political party leader says Demjanjuk was buried in US weeks after his March death", "John Demjanjuk's widow asks for hearing on citizenship of late husband, convicted Nazi war criminal", "US court: No posthumous US citizenship for Demjanjuk, convicted in war crimes probe", "Court rejects appeal for Demjanjuk citizenship", "Demjanjuk attorney files complaint against doctors", "Doctors Did Not Hasten Demjanjuk's Death", "Was John Demjanjuk Really 'Ivan the Terrible'? [169] Author Philip Roth, who briefly attended the Demjanjuk trial in Israel, portrays a fictionalized version of Demjanjuk and his trial in the 1993 novel Operation Shylock. [144] Demjanjuk's defense team argued that these documents were Soviet forgeries. It is a card Demjanjuk disputed, but one a federal judge ruled was legitimate. [129] The German Administrative Court rejected Demjanjuk's claim on 6 May. Upon his arrival, German authorities arrested him and held him in Munich's Stadelheim prison. Washington, DC 20024-2126 John Demjanjuk's defense claimed that the card was a Soviet-inspired forgery, despite several forensic tests that verified it as authentic. Germany later tried him for crimes at the Sobibor killing center. [72], Other controversial evidence included Demjanjuk's tattoo. Gas . [51], Demjanjuk's defense was supported by the Ukrainian community and various Eastern European migr groups; Demjanjuk's supporters alleged that he was the victim of a communist conspiracy and raised over two million dollars for his defense. [152], On 12 May 2011, aged91, Demjanjuk was convicted as an accessory to the murder of 28,060Jews at Sobibor killing center and sentenced to five years in prison with two years already served. In November 2009, he again sat in the defendant's dock. [167] The investigation was closed in November 2012 after no evidence emerged to support the allegations. [21], In August 1977, the Justice Department submitted a request to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio to revoke Demjanjuk's citizenship, based on his concealment on his 1951 immigration application of having worked at Nazi death camps. We had a suspicion it was him and we were able to enlist the support of the state police, explained Cueppers, as reported by Erik Kirschbaum of the Los Angeles Times. Following a lengthy investigation and a 1981 trial, the US District Federal Court in Cleveland stripped Demjanjuk of his US citizenship. Eli Rosenbaum was the acting Director of the United States Office of. [132] Demjanjuk was tried without any connection to a concrete act of murder or cruelty, but rather on the theory that as a guard at Sobibor he was per se guilty of murder, a novelty in the German justice system that was seen as risky for the prosecution. Demjanjuks citizenship was ultimately rescinded, and in 1986, he was extradited to Israel to stand trial. After Jewish survivors viewing a photo spread identified Demjanjuk as serving at Treblinka near the gas chambers, however, US government officials instead pursued the Treblinka charges. Brigit Katz [64] Despite initially attracting little attention, once survivor testimony began the trial became a "national obsession" and was followed widely throughout Israel. [12] In January 2020, a photograph album by Sobibor guard Johann Niemann was made public; some historians have suggested that a guard who appears in two photos may be Demjanjuk. [95] One described Ivan the Terrible as having brown hair, hazel eyes and a large scar down to his neck; Demjanjuk was blond with grayish-blue eyes and no such scar. After 16 months of trial, proceedings closed in mid-March 2011. A critical piece of evidence was John Demjanjuk's Trawniki camp identification card, located in a Soviet archive. After his original extradition to Israel, Demjanjuk's family had filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the US Department of Justice to obtain access to all investigative files at the OSI that related to Demjanjuk, Trawniki, and Treblinka. [173] In 2019, German prosecutors charged guards at a concentration camp as opposed to a death camp on the same rationale for the first time: former Stutthof concentration camp guards Johann Rehbogen and Bruno Dey[de]. His first child was due in late October, just when this magazine will hit the newstands. She wasnt able to go to Germany because of her heart problems. [83] Demjanjuk also denied having known how to drive a truck in 1943, despite having stated this on his application for refugee assistance in 1948; Demjanjuk alleged that he had not filled out the form himself and the clerk must have misunderstood him. She said that John always worried about her and their children. Powered by. Demjanjuk was born in Dubovi Makharyntsi,[13] a farming village in the western part of Soviet Ukraine. "[57], In October 1983, Israel issued an extradition request for Demjanjuk to stand trial on Israeli soil under the Nazis and Nazi Collaborators (Punishment) Law of 1950 for crimes allegedly committed at Treblinka. Their video showed him walking unaided to an appointment. Since his death, Demjanjuk's family has continued to stand by him. [32][33], Hanusiak claimed that Soviet newspapers and archives had provided the names during his visit to Kyiv in 1974; however, INS suspected that Hanusiak, a member of the Communist Party USA, had received the list from the KGB. His application for asylum was denied on 31 May 1984. Two photos, out of 361 from Sobibor and other camps, show Demjanjuk, a German Holocaust research centre says. )[23] Demjanjuk later claimed this was a coincidence, and said that he picked the name "Sobibor" from an atlas owned by a fellow applicant because it had a large Soviet population. [73][74] Four of the survivors who had originally identified Demjanjuk's photograph had died before the trial began. Now, a photo has emerged from the Nazi death camp at Sobibor, a camp where John Demjanjuk was accused of serving. "[9][pageneeded] After the conviction, Demjanjuk was released pending appeal.