Demjanjuk Goes on Trial in Jerusalem
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THE PLAIN DEALER . SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1999 5-G OURCENTURY 1987 ATA GLANCE ‘The Fumble’ joins Browns’ heartbreakers Again the Browns won the Central Division Again they won their first playoff game. They Demjanjuk PLAIN DEALER FILE PHOTOS beat the New York Jets, 38-21, with Earnest Byner running for 122 yards and Bernie Kosar Treblinka death throwing three touchdown passes. camp survivor Again the Browns were one game from the Josef Czarny weeps Super Bowl. Again John Elway and the Denver goes on trial while giving Broncos stood in the way. At halftime in Mile High Stadium, the Broncos led, 21-3. But with testimony at the Kosar throwing touchdown passes to Reggie trial of accused Langhorne, Byner and Webster Slaughter, the Nazi war criminal score stood at 31-31 in the fourth quarter. John Demjanjuk. As he had on “the Drive” a year earlier, El- in Jerusalem way took the Broncos 75 yards for a 38-31 lead. But this time, 5:14 was left on the clock. Kosar staged his own drive. With 1:12 to play, the Browns had second and 5 from the Denver By Fred McGunagle 8-yard line. On a trap play, Byner burst through the line and appeared about to score. The whole nation of Israel was Somehow, the Broncos’ Jeremiah Castile transfixed. reached out and stripped the ball from him. Television and radio carried the The Broncos recovered. They ran the clock trial live. “Bus drivers, as is the cus- down to 8 seconds, then took an intentional tom here, turn up their radios so rid- safety. ers can listen to the proceedings,” Final score: 38-33. “The Fumble” went down The Plain Dealer reported. “The trial in history with “the Drive” and “Red Right can be heard by radio in shops and 88.” cafes downtown and even above the Friday morning racket at Mahane Ye- • huda street market.” The Cavaliers had a new general manager, In Cleveland, the interest was nearly as intense, especially among Wayne Embry, and a new coach, Lenny Wil- Jews and Ukrainian-Americans. John kens. For the first time, blacks occupied the Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker top two positions in a major-league sports from Seven Hills, was on trial for franchise. “crimes against humanity” — the They also had a draft in which they picked first person to face that charge in Is- Brad Daugherty, Ron Harper and Johnny rael since Adolf Eichmann in 1961. Newman, and traded a draft choice for Mark In the courtroom, Holocaust survi- Price. Waiting in the wings was John “Hot Rod vors wept as witnesses described the Williams,” whom they had drafted a year horrors of Treblinka, Sobibor and earlier. He had to wait until he was cleared of other concentration camps. They charges of fixing games in college. watched as witness after witness They young Cavs won only 31 games and identified Demjanjuk, even after 43 missed the playoffs, but the rookies developed years, as the sadistic “Ivan the Terri- steadily. The future looked bright. ble” who sent Jews to the gas cham- bers and whose skull-cracking brutal- • ity stood out even among his The new owners of the Indians, Richard colleagues. and David Jacobs, named Peter Bavasi gen- A survivor of Treblinka told the eral manager. The Indians had won 24 more court he wanted to look Demjanjuk in games in 1986 than in 1985 and a Sports Illus- the eyes so he could be sure he was In the Jerusalem courtroom: John Demjanjuk, top left, and lawyer Mark O’Connor, bottom right. trated cover story picked them to win the 1987 Ivan. He did, then told the judges, “I American League pennant. wanted him to remember me!” As usual, the hopes were dashed. The Tribe On another occasion, a spectator subject to deportation. own memories of the won 61 games, only one more than in 1985, and stood up and shouted at Demjanjuk in Government lawyers maintained Holocaust — watched finished seventh. Lead-off hitter Brett Butler a mixture of Yiddish and Ukrainian, that, contrary to his account, he was intently. So did batted .311 and stole 47 bases and pitcher Neal “Be ashamed of yourself, you mur- really a guard in Nazi death camps. Ukrainian-Americans. Heaton won 17 games. But Bavasi feuded with derer!” He was removed from the They produced a Nazi ID card with a “By the time they finish courtroom. picture experts identified as a young sportswriters and with the fans, whom he with us, the Ukrainians At one point, Demjanjuk called out Demjanjuk. The card had been are going to be looked at irked by closing the Stadium bleachers. At- to a witness, “You liar.” His lead law- turned over by the Soviets. Demjan- tendance fell by 400,000. as barbarians,” pro- yer, Mark O’Connor, asked the court juk’s lawyers denounced it as a for- tested George Kul- • to excuse the outburst. He said Dem- gery. chytsky, a history pro- George Voinovich, meanwhile, was having janjuk had spent more than a year in Demjanjuk admitted he had lied fessor and vice trouble being both mayor of Cleveland and solitary confinement and it was “eat- about his German service, but president of United candidate for the U.S. Senate. ing at him.” claimed it was to avoid being sent Ukrainian Organiza- Chief among his troubles was a police nar- The circumstances that brought the back to Ukraine, where he was in tions of Cleveland. cotics scandal that kept slipping out from un- 66-year-old Demjanjuk to Jerusalem danger from the Soviets. Ukrainian- The trial dragged on der the rug where it had been swept. In Janu- began in 1940 when, as a 20-year-old Americans demonstrated outside the with intermittent Ukrainian farm worker, he was courthouse, saying they had endured ary, details of Arthur Feckner’s 1986 grand breaks. In August, drafted into the Soviet army. In 1942, their own Holocaust when millions shortly before the de- jury testimony came out. He told of selling his unit was captured by the Ger- starved under Stalin. $560,000 worth of cocaine from a house on fense was to begin, mans. He was sent to a prisoner-of- In 1981, U.S. District Judge Frank Demjanjuk fired O’Con- The Trawniki identification card: John Woodland Ave. He operated, he said, under war camp. Like many Ukrainian pris- Battisti revoked Demjanjuk’s citizen- the protection of narcotics detectives who nor. When he did take Demjanjuk’s defense argued that it was a oners, he was offered a chance to ship, and in 1985 ruled he should be the stand, he appeared Soviet forgery. wanted to set up a record 50-kilogram cocaine serve in a unit fighting against the extradited to Israel. In February arrest. They told him the arrest would help confused and forgetful. hated Russians. 1986, Demjanjuk was flown to Jeru- Demjanjuk’s family their supervisor, Inspector Howard Rudolph, He accepted. He said he later drove salem.A year later, he was finally on become police chief — which it did. visited him in Jerusalem. His daugh- Nishnic, said Demjanjuk had con- a truck and guarded a German gen- trial. Three Cleveland television sta- ter, Irene Nishnic, said the family cluded that two of the three judges Councilman Jeff Johnson, the NAACP and eral. After the war, Demjanjuk tions sent crews. They were joined by the 21st Congressional District Caucus called feared hostility from Israelis. They had already decided he was guilty. worked in Germany as a truck driver television networks from around the had seen an interview with Israeli for a City Council investigation. Voinovich for the U.S. Army motor pool. He world that sent back video for the children on television. “Some of them “My father-in-law says the only in- said the police were conducting an internal in- came to Cleveland in 1952 and got a nightly news. surance he has is that everybody is vestigation and no other probe was necessary. said they want my father to hang,” job at the Brook Park Ford Plant. In Because Israel had decided to use watching this,” Nishnic said. Forbes backed him. 1958, he became a U.S. citizen, stat- the trial to educate young Israelis she said. It turned out that hundreds of thousands of ing on his application that he had about the Holocaust, evidence was in- “It’s sad, the way things are right dollars from the drug arrest was missing. In been a farmer in Poland during the troduced of atrocities in which Ivan now,” she said. “But so be it. What can you do?I have a feeling every- McGunagle is a Cleveland free- July, however, the police internal investiga- war. the Terrible was not involved. Many lance writer. tion ended with no action. The case disap- In 1975, a pro-Soviet newspaper in spectators wept. Some fainted.A tele- thing will work out. It has to. He’s in- peared from public attention — temporarily. New York listed more than 70 sus- phone hot line was set up for Holo- nocent. My father is innocent.” She E-mail: [email protected] Voinovich had better luck downstate. Rep. pected wartime collaborators of caust victims and others for whom began to cry. Bob McEwen withdrew from the Senate race Ukrainian birth. Demjanjuk found the testimony caused emotional Few in Israel thought Demjanjuk in December. That meant Voinovich wouldn’t out he was on the list when he was stress. A psychologist was in the was innocent. Observers predicted he Photo researcher: face opposition in the 1988 Republican pri- called in for questioning in 1976.