The Devil Next Door (2019) s01e02 Episode Script

1
In the nightmare world
that was the Holocaust,
with millions put to death
with relentless bureaucratic efficiency,
it must have taken
someone of surpassing,
almost unimaginable cruelty,
to have earned the nickname
"Ivan the Terrible."
And indeed, that individual,
a guard at the Treblinka camp in Poland,
richly deserved that nickname,
demonstrating a bloodlust
that survivors recall
with chilling clarity.
Treblinka was a death camp.
850,000 Jewish were killed there.
It's maybe the biggest Jewish graveyard
in history.
People arrived to Treblinka.
They were took off, uh, the train.
Their hair was cut,
they were stripped of their clothes
and, uh, materials if they had some.
They were taken to the gas chambers, and
within two hours, uh, they were dead.
The German used to tell
the Jewish prisoner
no one will believe them after the war.
That even if they will survive
and tell the story,
no one will ever believe
that something like that happened.
It's now almost two
months since the start
of Israel's biggest war crimes trial
for a quarter of a century.
In the dock is John Demjanjuk.
He was extradited from America
to face charges that he was
the notorious Ivan the Terrible
who murdered thousands of Jews
at the Treblinka extermination camp
in Poland.
This is the first and the only trial,
and since then as well,
ever being televised live
from courtroom,
from the first to the last moment.
There he is,
as he stands here! Here he stands!
The trial here has mesmerized everyone.
Every day, large crowds pack
the auditorium where the trial is held.
Once the survivors began to testify,
it became a national event
and a national obsession.
While the testimony was going on,
the taxi drivers pulled over
and listened on the radio,
people were sitting at home,
people were listening at work
in a way that no one expected in Israel.
The show trial has become
a national obsession,
and "show trial" it surely is.
It runs live on national television
and two radio channels.
There is no escaping it.
I remember getting on the bus
during the time in which
the survivor testimony was being told.
The bus was completely full,
and it was so quiet,
you could hear a pin drop.
The whole nation talk
about the Holocaust,
about Treblinka,
about the fate of the Jews.
Uh, the show trial succeeds.
To teach history,
even the history of the Holocaust,
through a typical criminal case
which all the main facts are disputed,
you get the Demjanjuk case,
the Demjanjuk affair,
the Demjanjuk disgrace.
The Demjanjuk case began in 1975
when this man returned
to the United States
from a trip to Moscow.
He brought with him a list of men who
the Soviets claimed were war criminals
who'd taken refuge in America.
A list was turned over
to the US Immigration Service,
and they began to investigate people
on the list,
one of whom was Fyodor Federenko,
who had admitted that he was
a Treblinka death camp guard.
During the US Justice Department
investigation,
the American authorities sent a photo
spread to the Israeli authorities,
including a photograph of Demjanjuk
as filler, so to speak.
The Americans,
when they first get information,
they think, "Oh, well,
we have two collaborators"
in the United States
who we would like to denaturalize.
One is this Demjanjuk,
who we believe was at Sobibor,
and the other is this Federenko,
who we believe was at Treblinka.
How can we get more information
about these guys?
Well, we'll go to the Israelis,
because most of the survivors
of Treblinka
"and Sobibor have settled in Israel."
There was a unit of the Israeli police
that interviewed Holocaust survivors
in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem,
and elsewhere in Israel,
and took testimonies from them.
The police say investigators
invited the survivors of Treblinka
to identify anyone
who was on this photo parade.
So, the first witness came in,
she showed you the photo parade,
and you went through the photos
and jumped on Demjanjuk's
photo and said,
"This is the operator
of the gas chambers."
She was stunned,
and she immediately argued with him
and said, "You are mistaken."
This man was at Sobibor."
And he said,
"You can't tell me. I know him.
This is the operator
of the gas chambers."
Eleven survivors,
one after the other,
identified Demjanjuk's photo
as Ivan the Terrible from Treblinka.
The survivors were in shock
to see the man who stood
at the gas chambers.
They all said,
"He is photograph number 16."
And that's where the drama begins.
All rise.
Please be seated.
Mr. Shaked, please.
Your Honors,
I would like to call Gustav Borax.
Please rise.
I must warn you
that you must tell the truth,
and if you fail to do so,
you are liable to punishment.
Mr. Borax, what was your assignment
during your time in Treblinka?
- A barber.
- A barber.
Please face the bench when you talk.
A barber, I was a barber.
When the women entered
the building, what did they do?
They were afraid to enter.
They would cry and tear out their hair
because they saw they were
about to be put to death.
Ivan would push them in
with a bayonet spear.
And what happened to these
women after Ivan pushed them in?
They were wounded
and pieces of flesh were hanging
from them.
The blood was dripping.
My sister-in-law
my sister-in-law was there,
and she fell on me and started to cry.
The witness is crying
Your Honors, with all due respect,
why do we need to hear
these undisputed stories?
Why do you say such words?
This is the prosecution's case.
If the prosecution wants to create
a clear picture to the court,
they need to only
submit the testimonies,
and we totally agree to submit them.
But if they insist
on bringing these witnesses,
we say the purpose
is not to bring it to you, honors,
but to the 16 cameras up there.
I ask that Mr. Sheftel withdraw
his last words.
There will be a time when we will have
to take measures against you.
We will have to put you in contempt.
It is not the first time
you say these things,
and we call you to order.
- First, I would like to
- We call you to order.
You should take our words seriously
and with all the respect.
What is this talk?
The background is important.
The background helps me understand
the value of the identification.
Under what circumstances
did you know this man?
You can't value the identification
if you don't consider Treblinka.
The background, the deportation,
the murdered families.
We had to hear it.
It's part of our terrible story.
The stories were incredibly difficult.
There are cameras on you.
You know you're being filmed,
and you're a judge.
You can't let your emotions show.
But I went to visit a friend
who was hospitalized at the time.
And sitting by her bed,
I suddenly burst into tears.
I remember their laugh.
They were looking for amusement.
Bread, they had.
Sadism and murder, they had.
They only lacked amusement
And we, that were fighting to survive
I, Yoss'le from Warsaw,
that was fighting to
survive, was also
I was their child toy of sadism.
Yes, their child toy.
Cherney was heartbreaking.
His testimony was heartbreaking.
Especially from the eyes
of this naive child
that was running around there
in this camp,
reflected the evil of this place
and the ruthlessness.
I felt a lot of sorrow
for what they were forced to pass.
Many admire
Shaked's handling of the witnesses,
haunted people.
He listens to them attentively,
patiently, and does not interrupt,
but neither does he allow them
to veer off course,
even when the testimonies
describe harrowing details
such as the noises which could be heard
from within the gas chamber.
This is part of the
heavy responsibility.
I am there to make sure
that they convey what they
want to convey to the court,
and yet, come safe back home.
Why did you kill them?
Why?
Did they do anything to you?
Tell me why! Why did you kill them all?
Demjanjuk never ever showed
anything.
His eyes didn't blink.
There were no muscles
of facial expression used.
He was just blank.
Everybody said the same thing.
He's a psychopath holding all of this
inside of him.
Sheftel would always say that, you know,
"He's a peasant. He's dumb.
He's He's ignorant. He's"
Uh, that's nonsense.
I don't know whether his children
or his wife
or anybody can tell exactly who he was.
In a way, he seemed like a simple man,
but in a way,
he seemed, like, smart as a fox.
So, I think he was just a survivor.
And he did whatever it took to survive.
Have you ever come
to your father and ask him,
"Father, tell me the truth.
- "Are you or are you not?"
- We've always known my father's innocent.
We never had a shadow of a doubt
in our mind.
Our father's a very kind person,
a very gentle person.
We've learned a great deal
about the Holocaust
and we know exactly
the kind of person Ivan the Terrible is.
He's a sociopath.
He's somebody that has
absolutely no feeling for human life.
And that that person
is definitely not my father.
Ivan the Terrible was a brutal man.
My father's not a brutal man.
He never was.
He would've hit me.
I met Irene Demjanjuk at work.
She was a receptionist, secretary.
Just seeing her every day,
she always looked so melancholy.
Then one day, I saw her notebook
that had that name on it.
Uh, "Demjanjuk."
And I says,
"Are you related to that guy?"
And, uh, she says, "That's my dad."
I remember seeing Demjanjuk
for the first time.
I asked him, "Is any of this true?"
Just, I need to know.
Is any of it true?"
And he said, "If I was guilty",
I would just take a bottle of pills,
swallow 'em, and go to sleep
and not go through this,
but I'm not him,
- "and I'll fight these charges."
- Never. Never. Never.
I thought this whole case
was just gonna get thrown out.
So, we got married,
and I told her I'd do
whatever I could do to help.
It was, like, from the honeymoon
into the courtroom.
In the emergency center
of Ayalon prison,
15 cameras are pointed
at highly sensitive cells.
One of them films nonstop
the cell of Demjanjuk.
You have a home,
a shower, a garden, a yard,
but what do you miss?
You give me those crazy
Did you Did you give me
those silly question? What I miss?
You don't know what I miss?
I miss my beautiful country, America.
I miss my beautiful family, children,
and everybody.
My friend, you know?
When you give me question uh-huh,
uh, yeah, yeah, that's bushh.
His wife was really worried about him.
My wife was really worried about him.
And they couldn't believe
what was going on.
I learned everything
about the witnesses,
about the Holocaust.
It still plays on my mind, 24-7.
It doesn't go away.
The crimes that he was accused of
were horrid
but they were real.
I'd heard survivor testimony.
I've reviewed survivor testimony.
Each one was different.
Each one was
had their own personality.
Each one projected that personality.
Which one touched me the most?
It's obvious who that was.
Gustav Borax.
Mr. Borax, we're back to you, sir.
Do you recall
whether or not you gave your testimony
at a trial in the United States
in Florida
against an individual
that you remembered from Treblinka?
And then,
I was just doing mind and memory,
very gentle examination.
And gently, I'm asking him
Don't ask me why I asked that question.
I can't tell you.
"How did you get from
Israel to Florida?"
Mr. Borax, do you remember
how you traveled from Israel to Florida,
so that you could speak to the court
in that trial?
Witness: Yes, we went by train.
And it was, like, a big gasp
in the courtroom.
Don't ask me why I asked that question.
And he said, with
Looking right straight at me,
in a wonderful, gentle way, "By train."
By train.
How did he get to Florida?
And his answer, it was,
"I took a train"
from Czestochowa, in Poland, a train
straight to Florida.
"Straight to Florida."
Now, of course,
uh, this is a hundred percent senility.
And, uh, only a vicious
merciless prosecutor
would bring such a witness
to the witness stand.
He was not senile.
He testified that he saw his wife
and his children
and other relatives of his
being driven to the gas chamber,
and he was left behind.
He simply moved back to where he was,
and he lost contact
with what happens on the stage.
He probably heard,
"How did you reach Treblinka?"
And he said,
"By train from Czestochowa."
I mean, the answer is the best
testimony of his state of mind.
But I realized that I will not be able
to rely too much on his testimony.
Mickey Shaked was extremely worried,
and I could see, for the first time,
a crack in his confidence
to the point where
we could lose this.
You know, we could lose this.
Mr. Borax. How old are you?
I was born in 1901.
And you were married before Treblinka?
- Yes.
- And you had two kids?
Yes.
What were their names?
Their names?
Pinhas and
Pinhas
uh um
When Borax got on stage,
some of the details were problematic
for him.
For example,
he forgot the name of one of his kids
that got murdered during the Holocaust.
It was a very embarrassing part
in the trial,
maybe the hardest one.
Do you believe, Mr. Borax,
that you could have forgotten
the name of the younger son
who died in Treblinka?
There were moments when he was sharp
and moments when he wasn't,
and that was, of course,
terribly distressing because you saw
that these trials can't go on forever,
and that we're getting
very close to the end
of being able to have Holocaust
survivors as witnesses.
There were some tough days
in which we knew
that we were facing some problems.
The issue of the identification
became more problematic.
It was clear that not all
of the procedures that were done
were done in the best of manners.
Ivan the Terrible.
I am telling you that the first time
you were shown these photos
in the police station
and you did point to a picture,
but it wasn't Ivan.
It was Federenko. Picture number 17.
Each attorney brought his own world
into this trial.
And the most dangerous of them was,
of course, Sheftel,
because he went to the point
of identification immediately
and began to attack
the survivors.
You never pointed at "Ivan"
in any form or way!
You never mentioned his name,
never pointed at his photo.
You never said,
"Here's Ivan of Treblinka."
You didn't say anything about him.
You pointed at photo number 17
of Federenko. Period.
Some of the witnesses were liars.
Some of the witnesses were seniles,
and some of the witnesses were seniles
and liars.
What was the reaction
in Israel to your taking this case?
Devastating. Um
The country looked to me as enemy
of public number one.
Posters were raised
with photographs of the Holocaust
with shameful, hurtful things
directed especially
towards Counsel Sheftel.
You!
You are part of that!
Your hands are covered in blood!
I feel I am doing my job well,
and because I'm doing it well,
I'm spoiling the show
I fully realize that most
Israelis hated me more than my client.
I was called the most annoying person
in the state of Israel.
I was called a person
with no conscience whatsoever.
Nazi collaborator, killer,
and Nazi sympathizer.
Like, a a person that
should be killed, eliminated.
I couldn't go to synagogue,
because of the animosity
of the congregation.
Even my mother couldn't stand it.
She refused to talk to me.
He defended someone
who would've thrown his mother
into the gas chambers.
Who threw her sister.
Pfft.
That definitely
raised some questions.
Truly.
I took care of myself psychologically
against it.
In a way, it even assisted me.
It make me more hardened,
more fighter.
I was functioning like nothing happens,
and they couldn't believe
that it's possible.
So they started to say
I enjoy to be hated.
The defense lawyer
Yoram Sheftel thrives on notoriety.
To take pride in a German car,
especially one as
noticeable as a Porsche,
is still unusual in Israel.
He, as a matter of politics,
made himself into this
character who stood against the system,
and, uh, he loved every minute of it.
Mr. Sheftel, will you agree to take
This is no joke, this is a real machine,
and the test will be real.
Will you take the test
and answer whether you truly believe,
in your heart of hearts,
that Ivan Demjanjuk
is not Ivan the Terrible?
He was always quick
to sit in front of the camera.
Always agreeable to any question.
He didn't want nice questions.
He He wanted tough questions.
Listen
to the entire question and respond.
Yes, first question.
- Is today Tuesday?
- Yes.
- Would you cheat a client?
- No.
Do you believe that Ivan John Demjanjuk
is Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka?
No.
Based on the test,
with some reservation,
since the test was held
in a studio before a live audience,
my assessment is that Mr. Sheftel
is not telling the truth.
He may believe that John Demjanjuk
is Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka.
It's obvious to me
that Sheftel chose to close his eyes,
saying that Demjanjuk
was not guilty of anything,
that he was a saint.
And that was not the case.
Mr. Shaked,
do you have another witness today?
Yes. The witness is
Mr. Eliahu Rosenberg.
Rosenberg is not a likable person.
He's a difficult person.
He's a little bull,
and he's full of trauma and complexes
and everything submerged
deep within him.
And, uh, um, you know,
that is why, like a volcano,
he erupted.
He screamed, "Wachmann!"
And the door opened
We were hit on the head.
I was hit on the head, too.
I entered and saw a terrifying image
I saw a mountain,
a mountain of corpses to my left.
We started running about,
but someone ordered,
"Grab a corpse and run!"
I was forced to run like a horse.
Gallop like a horse.
I kept working this way until noon.
I found out later, if it please the court,
this transport was from yesterday,
the one on which my family had been.
Your Honor,
this name, "Ivan," I remember well
from when I was
in a hell named Treblinka.
Sometimes he would cut off
a piece of a nose, a piece of ear.
Stab!
Why? Why? You cannot comprehend why!
But in this complex of Treblinka,
you just don't understand why?
My God!
Why torture?
Why cut off flesh from humans?
Nobody ordered him to do it to them!
Nobody!
He did it on his own accord.
Every survivor
will tell you, "I've survived"
so that I can tell the story."
And here,
they were very much threatened.
They were much feeling threatened
by the fact
that someone doubted their story.
Someone doubted what happened to them
at Treblinka.
That's
It was beyond their comprehension.
Mr. Rosenberg,
was it ever in your heart,
the time you were watching this happen,
to try to do something to help those men
that were running outside naked?
How could you have done so?
Your Honors
If I saw I saw
I saw
people going into these gas chambers,
I had no contact with them.
I could see them five
meters away from me.
They didn't even have a chance
to look up at me.
And what could I have told them?
Mr. Rosenberg
But in what manner
could I help these people?
How? With what, with what?
Screaming,
"Don't get into those gas chambers"?
They didn't want to get
into the gas chambers.
And God forbid
any of us would have screamed,
shouted towards them,
would have tried to do anything.
That particular person
who would shout
I don't wish you, Mr. O'Connor,
to even look at what would have happened
to such a person.
They would have shoved me straight alive
into a pit full of blood!
So don't ask me questions
of that manner, Mr. O'Connor.
I implore you.
You weren't there. I was there.
Ask him! Ask him!
Let him tell you!
Let him tell you
what he would have done to me.
Mr. Rosenberg, I should like you to
look at the accused. And if you can
Will you please, Your Honor,
ask the accused to take off his glasses?
- What?
- His glasses.
His glasses?
Why?
I would like to see his eyes.
Please?
I want it
that he come in close to me, right here.
Okay.
He said, "I want to look at his eyes."
And when I look to his eyes,
I will know hundred percent for sure
"whether he's Ivan the Terrible or not."
I was against it.
I said, uh,
"This is part of the show trial."
But, O'Connor drag me, because he
was there for exactly for this.
And he said, "No, no, no, no." Ah!
He's the boss at that time,
so I silenced.
Mr. Rosenberg, come over.
It was put to him to get up
and walk across the hall,
in front of the court,
in front of the tribunal,
to look into his eyes,
to make proof-positive sure
that he recognized John Demjanjuk,
the autoworker from Cleveland, Ohio,
as the notorious Ivan the Terrible.
And John Demjanjuk's extending his hand.
He didn't expect that.
Ivan the Terrible, how dare you!
It's like being caught up in a tsunami.
You cannot help but be affected.
You're in a sea of people
who are reliving the worst period
in history
for their relatives
for their tribe.
And you cannot help but be affected.
- How dare you!
- Mr. Rosenberg
Get him away!
Please sit down! The public
is requested to keep their seats!
That is that devil!
Mr. Rosenberg,
please return to your witness stand.
Mr. Rosenberg
He jumped back as if he'd seen a snake.
And cried out. Screamed.
It was terrible.
You could see he knew him.
Mr. Rosenberg,
now that you're back on the stand,
what is your answer
to the prosecutor's question?
Mr. Shaked, repeat the question.
Who is the man on the defendant's bench?
Ivan!
I have no doubt whatsoever.
Ivan from the gas chambers at Treblinka.
That's the man I'm looking at now.
I saw his eyes,
his murderous eyes,
his face.
How dare you hold out your hand!
You murderer!
He says, "This is the murderous eyes"
of Ivan the Terrible."
Now, this was a sheer lie, lie,
but he was forced to lie.
What do you expect the poor guy to do?
To admit, in front of the nation,
that, uh,
he was talking bullshit till now,
and it's a mistaken identity?
Is such a thing possible?
In a normal court,
no, uh, no, uh,
television screening and so on,
maybe he will admit the truth.
He would be He would admit the truth.
But in the attitude of the court,
in the atmosphere of the court,
with the cameras on, he would say,
"I I made a mistake."
Never! Never!
Good evening from Jerusalem.
I'm Ted Henry
with news of the mounting case
against John Demjanjuk.
It almost seems that the people of Israel
are breathing a collective sigh of relief.
For many, the emotional pitch
of this courtroom drama
has just been too much to bear.
But this sort of thing,
how is this possible?
- How could such a thing
- They were wounded,
and pieces of flesh, whole pieces
of flesh were hanging behind them.
The blood was dripping.
He was brutal. He was cruel.
He was a sadist.
After all, all of them were cruel
and sadists.
Can anybody under understand?
This is the disaster's
disaster. The disaster of the Holocaust.
That no language can convey
even a minute of Treblinka.
John Demjanjuk has only a few months
to show this court it has the wrong man.
His life is very much at stake
because conviction would almost
certainly mean execution by hanging.
This is Dean Reynolds
for Good Morning America in Jerusalem.
New evidence is casting doubt
on Israel's case
against the man facing trial there
as the notorious Nazi death camp guard,
Ivan the Terrible.
His lawyer claims to have
Soviet government documents
that will clear him.
And one of the world's
foremost Nazi hunters
has come up with something
even more compelling.
The veteran Nazi
hunter, Tuviah Friedman,
has now produced a signed statement,
taken from a Treblinka survivor
39 years ago,
in which the witness said
Ivan the Terrible had been killed
during a 1943 uprising by camp inmates.
To my great mazel,
we discovered 64 pages
written by Rosenberg, in Yiddish,
his native language,
describing how Rosenberg and few others
personally killed Ivan the Terrible
on the 2nd of August 1943.
Holocaust survivor Eliahu Rosenberg
testified in court
that John Demjanjuk was, in fact,
Treblinka death camp guard
Ivan the Terrible.
However, last week, defense attorneys
discovered this 1945 statement,
in which they say Rosenberg claims
he saw another prisoner kill the guard,
Ivan the Terrible,
during a prison uprising.
Demjanjuk's son-in-law, Ed Nishnic,
showed me a copy of the statement,
which he claims was written by Rosenberg
two years after the prison uprising.
Rosenberg allegedly says
he saw a fellow inmate, Gustav,
give Ivan a hit on
the head with a spade,
so that he stayed lying there forever.
I think that it's a very good chance
that Mr. Rosenberg will be on this stand
by the end of the week.
I think Mr. Rosenberg needs to be asked
some very pointed questions.
Since it was sure
it's not a second Jesus Christ
that came out of his grave
to the state of Israel to be tried
um, this is, uh, something
that, uh, cannot be explained.
I can't imagine
why Eliahu Rosenberg said what he said,
knowing what he knew
that he had said in 1947,
that the true Ivan the Terrible
was killed.
I was sorry for him.
I was sorry for the other survivors
who really believed in their heart
of hearts it was Ivan the Terrible,
and I was sorry for Jews.
Mr. Rosenberg
did you not, in fact,
tell Tuviah Friedman
in the first person, plural
not that you had heard by hearsay,
but that in fact, "we,"
as a collective term
had burst in and killed
the sleeping Ivan?
Is that true, sir?