Reply #22: Only he knows if he really did it at this point. [View All]

He was originally tried and convicted in Israel based on Soviet-provided identification documents that were later clearly shown to be KGB forgeries, and witnesses who identified him as Ivan the Terrible. He was freed many years later when a large number of other witnesses testified that Ivan was actually someone else, and that some of the documents provided by the Soviet's had been faked to implicate him. It turned out that the prosecuting witnesses were simply wrong. Mistaken identity.

One of the items that wasn't directly addressed when it was overturned by the the Israeli Supreme Court was his ID card, and that was the basis of the current belief that he "probably" worked at Sobibor. Our own FBI, when it examined the ID card in 1985, determined that the ID card was "probably fabricated" (the record of that determination was classified until earlier this year and wasn't available to US courts when he was fighting extradition). German forensic scientists, when they examined it, said that it "looked real", but that they were unable to actually date the paper for some reason, and couldn't determine whether it was actually printed in the 1940's, or whether it was a 1980's reproduction.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110412/ap_on_re_eu/eu_demjanjuk_fbi_doubts

The think you have to remember about Demjanjuk is that he was a Ukranian anti-communist who spoke out against the Soviet leadership. The KGB took special interest in discrediting people like him.

He may have done it, or he may be a victim of a Cold War era smear campaign. I don't really think there's any way for us to know at this point...it's been too long, and the "facts" have been too muddied by people with agendas.