Lawrence Douglas - The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial

Advance Praise for The Right Wrong Man

The Right Wrong Man is a fascinating exploration of what kind of justice the bit players in historys greatest crimes deserve. With the authority of an academic and the eye of a novelist, Lawrence Douglas sheds bright new light on the perplexing case of John Demjanjuk, a small cog in the Nazis genocidal machine. Although Demjanjuk was not Ivan the Terrible, as originally accused, Douglas argues that in the end he was Ivan-the-terrible-enough to have been properly convicted.

Jane Mayer, staff writer with the New Yorker

In this excellent book, Lawrence Douglas, a thoughtful student of legal attempts to punish atrocities committed in wartime, uncovers the strange case of the non-German who, impressed into serving as a Nazi concentration camp guard, was, many years later, repeatedly tried as a war criminal and ultimately convicted.

Richard A. Posner, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

Lawrence Douglas has once again provided us with a history-laden and provocative analysis of Holocaust trials. His riveting study of the Demjanjuk saga is of importance, not just to historians and jurists, but to all those who wonder how can justice ever prevail when the crime being adjudicated is genocide.

Deborah E. Lipstadt, Emory University

A wonderfully lucid book about the bizarre and fascinating case of John Demjanjuk, the only American to lose his citizenship twice, and about the much larger issues of law and morality that arise when individuals are held to account for crimes committed by the state.

Scott Turow, author of Identical

The Right Wrong Man is powerful, richly observed, and darkly entertaining. Anyone interested in postwar history will want to read it.

Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer with the New Yorker

Douglas has produced an excellent account of the Demjanjuk caseor rather cases. His beautifully written book is the definitive work on the subject.

William Schabas, author of Unimaginable Atrocities: Justice, Politics, and Rights at the War Crimes Tribunals

In this insightful and gracefully written book, Douglas elevates the Demjanjuk case from a legal curiosityone involving an initially mistaken prosecution followed by a later valid oneto a study in the uses and limits of the law when it confronts genocide.

Michael B. Mukasey, former U.S. attorney general

In this pathbreaking book, Lawrence Douglas reflects on how jurists in the Demjanjuk trial grappled with challenges of the passage of time, the infirmity of the accused, the hierarchy of perpetrators, inherited legal institutions, and different legal traditions. This is an essential work for understanding judicial reckoning with mass atrocity in our time.

Michael R. Marrus, professor emeritus, University of Toronto

Impeccably researched, imaginatively crafted, and beautifully written, The Right Wrong Man is a brilliant analysis of the longest, most complex and confusing, and most controversial series of legal measures ever initiated against any Holocaust perpetratorJohn Demjanjuk. The story of the three decades of litigation required to convict him is told here as only Lawrence Douglas can tell it.

Charles W. Sydnor Jr., Virginia Holocaust Museum

A marvelous book and a gripping read, The Right Wrong Man dissects one of the most bizarre episodes in the adjudication of the Holocaust. It is reminiscent of, but superior to, Hannah Arendts Eichmann in Jerusalem. Like Arendt, Douglas studied his subject from up close, from inside the courtroom. Combining eloquent reporting with trenchant analysis, he has produced a rare thing indeeda learned page-turner.

Jens Meierhenrich, London School of Economics

This book cements Douglass reputation as our leading guide to thinking about the difficult moral, political, and legal issues surrounding the postwar Nazi trials. The Right Wrong Man is brilliant, ambitious, and wide ranging.

Devin O. Pendas, author of The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 19631965

A remarkable and important work that lays bare the limits of the justice system for the greatest crimes. Lawrence Douglas has woven out of the trials of John Demjanjuk a book that is utterly gripping and finely crafted, one that offers insights that are profound, troublesome, and enlightening.

Philippe Sands, University College London

THE
RIGHT
WRONG
MAN

Perhaps the most exhaustively examined document in legal history: exterior face of Demjanjuks Trawniki ID. Courtesy Office of Special Investigations, DoJ.

THE
RIGHT
WRONG
MAN

John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Princeton and Oxford

Copyright 2016 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,

Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford

Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

press.princeton.edu

Jacket image: John Demjanjuks service card

Marijan Murat / dpa / Corbis

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Douglas, Lawrence, author.

The right wrong man : John Demjanjuk and the last great Nazi war-crimes trial / Lawrence Douglas.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-12570-1 (alk. paper)

1. Demjanjuk, JohnTrials, litigation, etc. 2. War crime trialsUnited States. 3. War crime trialsIsrael. 4. War crime trialsGermany. 5. World War, 19391945Atrocities. 6. Holocaust, Jewish (19391945) I. Title.

KF228.D44D68 2015

341.690268dc23 2015007801

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Sabon Next LT Pro, Helvetica Neue LT Std and Typewriter MT

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Jacob and Milo, again

Oh what crazy ideas you get,
still thinking about justice

H. G. Adler, The Journey

CONTENTS

THE
RIGHT
WRONG
WRONG
MAN

Introduction

Die Zeit, the German weekly, called it the last great Nazi war crimes trial, a designation that misled on almost every count. The defendant stood accused of assisting the SS in the murder of 28,060 Jews at the Sobibor death campbut not of being a Nazi. Nor did the trial involve war crimes, since the systematic extermination of unarmed men, women, and children was not an act of war. Then there was the question of greatness. By all accounts, the defendant, John (Ivan) Demjanjuk, had been little more than a peon at the bottom of the Nazis exterminatory hierarchy. Compared with Nuremberg, where twenty-one leaders of the Nazi state faced an international military tribunal, or with the Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann, logistical mastermind of a continent-wide scheme of deporting Jews to their deathor even with the French trial of Klaus Barbie, the so-called Butcher of Lyonthe proceeding against Demjanjuk looked almost inconsequential. Add the fact that the defendant was at the trials start a near nonagenarian, seemingly in frail health, and that sixty-seven years had elapsed since his alleged crimes, and the most remarkable aspect of the trial was the fact that it was staged at all. All the same, in putting Demjanjuk on trial, German prosecutors had assumed a radical risk. An acquittal would have been disastrous, a highly visible and final reminder of the failure of the German legal system to do justice to Nazi-era crimes. For