Demjanjuk’s Estate Files New Citizenship Appeal
Nazi Appeal: The estate of Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk wants his U.S. citizenship posthumously restored. Image by getty images
The estate of convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk again has asked an appeals court to help posthumously restore his U.S. citizenship.
In a filing Monday, Demjanjuk’s estate asked the full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to take up the case. In June, a three-judge panel of the court ruled that Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship cannot be posthumously restored and that his death made the case moot.
Demjanjuk, a former Ohio autoworker, died in southern Germany on March 17 at the age of 91.
The defense said the American government withheld potentially helpful material and said that the full court must take up the matter.
The defense claimed that U.S. District Judge Dan Polster in Cleveland violated basic fairness by ruling against Demjanjuk’s citizenship appeal without holding a hearing on a 1985 secret FBI report uncovered by The Associated Press. The document indicates that the FBI believed a Nazi ID card purportedly showing that Demjanjuk served as a death camp guard was a Soviet-made fake.
“Fraud is fraud. It does not die” with the death of parties involved, the defense said in its latest filing, reported The Associated Press.
The government argued that the earlier defense filings contained no new information in the matter.
“Over three decades, we have repeatedly rejected Demjanjuk’s challenges to the authenticity of the Trawniki card and fraud on the court,” the court said last June.
Restoration of his citizenship would have enabled his widow to seek Social Security benefits.
A Munich court convicted Demjanjuk last year on 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. Demjanjuk, who maintained that he had been mistaken for someone else, died while his conviction was under appeal.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
