John Demjanjuk

Thirty-five years ago, John Demjanjuk was a retired autoworker who had raised three children in the Seven Hills suburb of Cleveland. When he died March 17, the 91-year-old was in a German nursing home. Demjanjuk was awaiting an appeal of his conviction for aiding one of the greatest atrocities in history. In 1977 evidence emerged that Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian immigrant, had served as a Nazi concentration-camp guard, committing barbaric acts that earned him the nickname “Ivan the Terrible.” He was stripped of his American citizenship, extradited to Israel and sentenced to death.

The fall of the Soviet Union spared Demjanjuk, as newly available documents led the Israeli Supreme Court to overturn his conviction. But in 2009, German officials tried him again. His conviction after that 18-month trial–which broke new ground in that there was no eyewitness that Demjanjuk was involved in a specific killing–opened the possibility that other Nazis may still stand trial. But time is perilously short for bringing any more to justice. Demjanjuk’s was likely the last major Nazi war-crimes trial. Yet as Israeli Supreme Court Justice Meir Shamgar said in overturning Demjanjuk’s first conviction, “The matter is closed–but not complete.”