John Demjanjuk

John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk 3 April 1920 – 17 March 2012), was a Trawniki and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, Majdanek, and Flossenbürg. Demjanjuk became the center of global media attention in the 1980s, when he was tried and convicted in Israel after being identified as "Ivan the Terrible", a notoriously cruel watchman at Treblinka extermination camp. Demjanjuk was sentenced to death by hanging in 1988. In 1993, the verdict was overturned. Shortly before his death, he was tried and convicted in the Federal Republic of Germany as an accessory to the 28,060 murders that occurred during his service at Sobibor.

Born in Soviet Ukraine, Demjanjuk was conscripted into the Red Army in 1940. He fought in World War II and was taken prisoner by the Germans in spring 1942, becoming a Trawniki collaborator. After training, he served at Sobibor extermination camp and at least two concentration camps. After the war, he married a woman he met in a West German displaced persons camp, and emigrated with her and their daughter to the United States. They settled in Seven Hills, Ohio, where he worked in an auto factory and raised three children. Demjanjuk became a US citizen in 1958.