John Demjanjuk

Convicted World War II war criminal John Demjanjuk was born to poor disabled parents in the Ukraine, Soviet Union. The family nearly starved to death due to the famine resulting from Soviet policies in the 1930s. He had only four years of school and was drafted into the Soviet Army in 1941. In 1942 he was wounded and captured in Crimea. He was believed to have joined a Ukrainian unit made up of volunteers and former POWs who became guards at several Nazi death camps, notably Sobibor and Treblinka. Many survivors have identified him as a particularly brutal and murderous guard nicknamed "Ivan the Terrible", responsible for the deaths of thousands of inmates at the camps. After the war he managed to escape capture and was placed in a camp for displaced persons in Germany, where he met and married Vera Bulochnhnik. They had a daughter, Lydia (born in 1950). The family emigrated to the US in 1952 and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. He worked as a mechanic at a Ford Motor Co. plant and his wife worked in a factory. They had two more children, John Jr. and Irene. He became a naturalized citizen in 1973 and the family moved to Seven Hills, Ohio. The charges against him were investigated by US authorities and, although it was determined that there wasn't enough evidence to conclusively prove his identity as "Ivan the Terrible", it was discovered that he had provided false information on his citizenship application. His American citizenship was revoked in 1981 and he was deported to Israel, where he was arrested and put on trial for war crimes in 1986. He was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1988. In 1993 the Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction. In 1999 his American citizenship was restored but revoked again that same year. He was deported to Germany in 2009 and scheduled to stand trial for war crimes, but he died in a nursing home there in 2012. He is survived by his wife, two daughters, Lydia Maday and Irene Nishnic; a son, John Demjanjuk Jr.; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.