He was naturalised as a US citizen but his citizenship was temporarily removed after a US judge ruled in 1981 that he had lied in his citizenship application about his wartime activities. Walking toward the tan-brick Seven Hills house an hour and a half late, the 25-year-old worried about the impression he would make on the family. I looked him in the eye. They turn on an Israeli accent at will a la Rich Litt., when they need to bring a little levity to any situation. He later stood trial in Germany, where he was found guilty, but had appealed the sentence. At the trial, prosecutors said Demjanjuks job at Sobibor was to lead Jews to the gas chambers to be killed. According to German law, this meant that his presumption of innocence was still intact and, therefore, he managed to elude a criminal conviction. The Jewish News of Northern California reported that he was buried on March 31, 2012, two weeks after he died in Germany. The question that became the focus of trials decades later was what he did for the three years following 1942. There had been a strict ban on pictures, Cueppers said. The trial against him - one of the last major Nazi trials - was . Asking prosecutors in Rosenheim to open an investigation to look into five doctors and a nurse, Bush raised suspicion of manslaughter and causing bodily harm to Demjanjuk. The living martyers, the survivors of the Holocaust, were put on a stage before the entire world at the behest of Isrwael, working hand in hand with the United States Deptartment of Justice. Historican Martin Cueppers points at a man, presumably former security guard John Demjanjuk, at the Nazi death camp Sobibor during a news conference of newly discovered photos from the Sobibor . Like most children, Eddie and his friends talk about how their fathers earn a living, Ed Nishnic says. In 1988, during one of his trials, Irene Nishnic, John Jr., and his wife Vera walked onto the stage and yelled at the prosecutors, telling them that they were all liars. I might be able to teach him a few things, Nishnic says confidently. I always thought and Im sure he always thought hed be at the wedding. Demjanjuk with his lawyers at his second trial. In a 12-page complaint obtained by The Associated Press and published in a news report in 2012, Demjanjuk's attorney Ulrich Busch raised the prospect of possible "foul play" in the death of his client. Demjanjuk, who had claimed he was a Ukrainian prisoner of war, became a naturalized American in 1958, changed his name from Ivan to John, forged a career as an autoworker, and started a family, according to Cleveland.com. "How can you? Taro Yamasaki/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty. "The Devil Next Door" premiered Monday on the streaming service, and it focuses mostly on Demjanjuk's trial in Israel in the 1980s one of the last major Nazi war . In 2011, Demjanjuk was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison, but he died in 2012 at age 91 while awaiting his appeal in a German nursing home. Like their mother, neither woman will talk to the media. He was held until 1993 when the KGB faxed over additional paperwork indicating that another man named Ivan Marchenko was Ivan the Terrible. Who can comprehend that? John asks. Read about our approach to external linking. That would be the last thing we would like.". Instead, it was the suspicious death of one of their Israeli attorneys five days before the start of John Demjanjuks appeal. These two men of Eastern European descent, John Jr. and Ed, who is third-generation Czech and Carpatho-Rus, learned the same as most junior- and high-school students about World War II and the Holocaust. You follow in the steps of where Ivan used to go. The question of John Demjanjuks guilt, of whether the now 72-year-old man poked 850,000 Jews as they headed for their deaths in Treblinkas gas chambers or stood guard at another Holocaust camp called Sobibor, is about to be determined by the same Iraeli high court that convicted and sentenced him to death in April 1988. When the shop at the West Side Market, they cannot maneuver through the throngs without someone yelling out their names and asking about the case. He believed in his wife and her love for her father. One year later, in March 2012, he died aged 91 before his appeal could be heard by the courts. * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. At Demjanjuks first trial in Israel, prosecutors alleged that he had killed thousands of prisoners at Treblinka between 1942 and 1943, and that hed been trained to operate the camps gas chambers. Their passports are testimonials of their dedication and determination. Check here if you would like to receive subscription offers and other promotions via email from TIME group companies. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. At that point, Germany had decided to try a new strategy in its pursuit of justice against Nazi war criminals, looking not only for evidence of specific killings but also for evidence that the person had been part of the process of mass killings. Ed Nishnic usually closes the conversation. Born in Ukraine in 1920, Demjanjuk was raised in impoverished conditions, and, along with his family, endured an engineered famine in the 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians. As it turns out, it is the Demjanjuk family that has fought the older mans battle while John Demjanjuk sits in solitary confinement. Vera Demjanjuk always talks first. An estimated 167,000 Jews were killed at Sobibor, using vehicle exhaust fumes, even though there were only about 20 German SS officers stationed at the camp. But in 1999, the U.S. government sued Demjanjuk again to strip him of his citizenship to investigate his role as a Nazi guard at the Majdanek and Sobibor Nazi German camps in occupied Poland. This week, German prosecutors charged a 100-year-old man who had worked as a guard, like the man . And in 2012, John Demjanjuk Jr. told reporters, "[John Demjanjuk] loved life, family and humanity. John Demjanjuk arrived for his German trial at the age of 90, The defence said that the SS ID card was a forgery. Read about our approach to external linking. In 2009, Demjanjuk was deported to Germany where he stood trial on the charges. By this point, Demjanjuks family claimed he was too old and sick to continue with the process, but doctors cleared him for trial. Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? The son of famed John Demjanjuk has dismissed the claim that newly emerged photos of the Sobibor death camp show his father performing duties as a guard. Sobibor death camp photos may feature John Demjanjuk - WEWS Each has crossed the Eropean continent in search of witnesses who can tell them about Ivan the Terrible, about convicted Nazi conspirator Fedor Federenko, who was stripped of his U.S. citizenship and shot to death by fireing squad upon his return to then Soviet Union. The docuseries explores whether he was actually a notorious Nazi concentration camp guard named "Ivan the Terrible," or if it was simply a case of mistaken identity, as he claimed. Netflix's The Devil Next Door explained - Digital Spy Instead , the tend to their families and help by lending financial and emotional support. One man left the stand, walking up to Demjanjuk to stare him in the eye, then shouted That is the devil! Another survivor pleaded, Why did you kill them? Digital The numbers estimates pieced together from what documentation there is available, with potential to be far greater are staggering. Although Demjanjuk died before a German appeals court could review his conviction, German prosecutors successfully prosecuted subsequent cases against killing center and concentration camp guards using the same theory tested in the Demjanjuk case. Well just be happy to get him home and try to rebuild our lives, Nishnic says. At the same time, a federal appellate court in Nashville is preparing to hear testimony from members and former members of the Justice Department Office of Special Investigations. A 1943 image of camp guards at Sobibor in Nazi-occupied Poland. Everyone should have a son-in-law like Ed. Nishinc, an ever boisterous man with a quick smile and a quicker retort, greets a guest with, Welcome to the bunker! In the far corner of the long and narrow, dark, cave-like room, Ed Nishnic leans back in a chair, size-11 feet propped up on the desk, left hand gripping a phone receiver.