February 16, 1987
Demjanjuk Trial Opens in Jerusalem
Historical context
On this day, February 16, 1987, John Demjanjuk’s trial opened in Jerusalem. Prosecutors charged that he was the Treblinka guard known as Ivan the Terrible. That identification was later overturned.
Archive record
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- Date
- February 16, 1987
- Verified sources
- 1
- Archive threads
- 7
On this day, an Israeli court opened the trial of John Demjanjuk in Jerusalem. He was only the second person, after Adolf Eichmann, tried in Israel for crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity. Prosecutors charged that, after capture as a Soviet prisoner of war, he had trained at Trawniki and served as the Treblinka guard known to prisoners as Ivan the Terrible.
The court convicted him in 1988 and sentenced him to death. Israel’s Supreme Court later overturned the Treblinka identification. A later German trial convicted him as a Sobibor guard; he died in 2012 while that conviction was on appeal. This article dates the Jerusalem opening, not a finding that he was Ivan the Terrible.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- John Demjanjuk: Trying a Nazi Collaborator · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum · Holocaust Encyclopedia View source
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