CLEVELAND — The Jewish and Ukrainian-American communities in John Demjanjuk's adopted hometown split over his war-crimes conviction, alternately calling it delayed justice or an unfair legal proceeding.
"I don't think there's any substantial doubt in the Jewish community of Cleveland as to his guilt," said Rabbi Richard Block of The Temple-Tifereth Israel. "The Holocaust is still a wound that doesn't heal. Many of those who perpetrated those crimes were never brought to justice. It's appropriate that anyone who can be, will be."
Demjanjuk was born in Ukraine, and Lana Barkov, editor of a monthly Ukrainian newspaper in Cleveland, said Ukrainian-Americans would see the verdict as Germans trying to push the blame for the Holocaust onto others.
"They are trying to absolve themselves of a crime, a blame, a shame, and put it on the shoulders of others," she said. "Justice has not been served in this case and basically John Demjanjuk was made a scapegoat."
Demjanjuk was charged in Germany with 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder, one for each person who died during the time he was accused of being a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker, lived in a neat ranch-style home in suburban Seven Hills and occasionally could be seen gardening in the backyard. A no-trespassing notice has been posted on the door of the Demjanjuk home over the years and police patrols enforced it.
Andrew Futey, son of Ukrainian immigrants and a leader in an umbrella group of Ukrainian-American organizations, questioned the fairness of the Germany trial. He noted that Israel had tried Demjanjuk in the 1980s on accusations of being a guard at the Treblinka extermination camp and then freed him after a court said the evidence showed he was the victim of mistaken identity.
Zev Harel, an 81-year-old Holocaust survivor, said he was satisfied with the verdict but it didn't take away the pain of having lost family members in the camps.
"I'm thankful for being a survivor," he said. "I'm thankful for having the citizenship in this country. I'm thankful for the World War II veterans that brought about the defeat of the Nazi forces, but this doesn't take away all the pain that's there concerning the losses."
Harel disputed the defense contention that camp guards were forced into that duty.
"Persons like Demjanjuk were not forced to do this, hey had to volunteer their services," he said. "Justice has been served and it's better late than never."
The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center welcomed the conviction.
The conviction "sends a powerful message that those responsible for Holocaust crimes can still be held accountable even though decades have passed since they were committed," the center's Israel director, Efraim Zuroff, said in an email.
"Demjanjuk's conviction, moreover, will hopefully facilitate the prosecution of additional Nazi war criminals in Germany and in other countries," Zuroff wrote. "Today's verdict is a long-awaited victory for the victims, their families and people of moral conscience."