As a child, Stalin condemned me to die through Holodomor, the forced famine. As a Soviet Ukrainian POW of the Germans, they tried to kill me through starvation and slave labor. The USA and Israel fraudulently accused me of being Ivan the Terrible. As a result, I spent 8.5 years in prison and 5 years in the death cell. Though innocent, on each of those 1,800 days in a death cell, I feared I was going to die due to the reckless fraud and political motives of corrupt prosecutors and judges who were not seeking justice.

Now, nearing the end of my life, Germany, the nation which murdered with merciless cruelty millions of innocent people, attempts to extinguish my dignity, my soul, my spirit, and indeed my life with a political show trial seeking to blame me, a Ukrainian peasant, for the crimes committed by Germans in World War III. They chose me for prosecution – a foreign POW in the brutal hands of Germany – rather than any of the truly guilty Germans and Ethnic Germans. Germany’s weapons of torture in this trial include, suppression of exculpatory evidence, falsification of history, introduction of so-called legal principles which never existed in Germany previously, conspiring with fraudulent prosecutors of the USA and Israel, and a reckless refusal of each argument, motion and exculpatory piece of evidence my defense has submitted which should have already resulted in my acquittal and freedom.

Fearing the truth, the German Court and Prosecutors continue to turn a blind eye to justice by refusing the following:

To request from Russia and Ukraine, File 1627, the 1400 page Soviet MGB/KGB investigative file on my case.

  1. To request from Russia and Ukraine, File 15457, the investigative file of Ignat Danilchenko, specifically to include the report of interview conducted with him about me at the request of the US authorities in 1983/1984.
  2. To request a qualified expert to examine the high quality photos available of the signature on the 1393 Trawniki document which has been falsely attributed to me.
  3. To accept as historical fact that the Nazis tortured Ukrainian POWs like me with starvation so that 3.5 million were murdered.
  4. To accept as historical fact, based upon overwhelming evidence from multiple countries and dozens of witnesses that POW Trawnikis were coerced under a real threat of death and were executed for attempting desertion.
  5. To accept as historical fact, based upon the entire record of the US and Israel proceedings, that I have previously been indicted and tried for the crimes now alleged here which resulted in my acquittal and release from Israel.

I have survived the brutality of Stalin and Nazi Germany and the wrongful conviction and death sentence of the Israelis and Americans. I have lived through unimaginable horrors from Stalin and death by starvation, to Nazi Germany and death by starvation and cannibalism as a POW, to Israel and death by hanging. This trial is now nothing more than the execution of these three unjust and horrific death sentences. There remains no other way for me to show the world what a mockery of justice this trial represents. Unless the Court accepts the historical facts, uses it’s authority to obtain the critical defense evidence not yet before the court and shows the world that it fully accepts its duty to seek justice rather than just conduct a political show trial, I will within 2 weeks begin a hunger strike.

John Demjanjuk

The following are comments by his son, John Demjanjuk Jr.:

“If the Germans are interested in justice, they will simply ask the Russians and the US to turn over all the evidence including Soviet Investigative file 1627 on my father and the missing Danilchenko reports. They have the access to evidence and we do not. This case has been fraught with government cover-up and prosecutorial misconduct and fraud over the years. So far, this trial has been just another chapter of the same injustice. Testimonies and official Nazi war records prove Soviet POWs faced starvation by the millions or were coerced to serve or face execution for desertion. It is abhorrent for Germany to now make its former prisoners and victims responsible for the crimes committed by Germans who in many cases were acquitted or never tried by Germany. This is not about justice being better late than never. Rather, it is Germany’s continued utter failure to accept responsibility for destroying the millions of people it captured.”

John Demjanjuk Jr.