John Demjanjuk Editorial Photo

Accused war criminal John Ivan Demjanjuk answers a question at his trial in Jerusalem`s Binyenei Ha`uma, convention center, on August 3, 1987. The former Cleveland, Ohio auto worker was accused of being notoriously brutal Treblinka concentration camp guard Ivan Marchenko, known as Ivan the Terrible for the atrocities he committed. Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian, lied about the fact that he volunteered to work at a concentration camp and thus illegally imigrated to the US and obtained American citizenship. He was subsequently stripped of his citizenship and remanded to Jerusalem for trial. Though found guilty, a few months later he was released when it was revealed that he had served at the Sobibor camp and was not, in fact, Marchenko. Years later he was deported again from America and found guilty in a German courtroom and sentenced to 5 years imprisonment. He was living as a free man in a German nursing home, appealing the verdict, when news of his death was released on March 17, 2012. Demjanjuk was 91. In the photo he is flanked by security guards and an court interpreter. In 2019 Netflix released a multi-part documentary series on the trial.