
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 23, 1993                   TAG: 9309230216
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: SEVEN HILLS, OHIO                                LENGTH: Medium

DEMJANJUK AVOIDS PROTESTERS

On pleasant, tree-lined Meadow Lane, 18 people - some of them dressed in black-and-white-striped shirts meant to evoke memories of Nazi Germany's death camps - waited for John Demjanjuk to come home Wednesday morning.

When he did not appear by early afternoon, the leader of the group declared a victory because, he said, Demjanjuk "understands that he is not free."

Accused, imprisoned and finally cleared by Israeli authorities on charges that he was a notorious Nazi prison guard known as "Ivan the Terrible," Demjanjuk did return to American soil and to Ohio on Wednesday for the first time in seven years.

Wearing a white Panama hat, a sports shirt and a bulletproof vest, the 73-year-old retired autoworker landed at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport early Wednesday. Under tight security, he then boarded a private aircraft for a flight to Medina, Ohio, near Cleveland, where he arrived shortly after 10 a.m.

But Demjanjuk, who still faces a Justice Department attempt to have him deported to his native Ukraine or to Russia, did not come near his modest, brick home in this working-class suburb of Cleveland. He was rushed from the Medina airport in an automobile to an undisclosed location, where he will remain in seclusion, perhaps for several weeks, according to his son-in-law, Edward Nishnic.

Demjanjuk's return to the United States was the latest chapter in a tangled and emotional legal battle that has lasted more than a decade. Stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 1981 for lying on his immigration papers, Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel in 1986 to stand trial on war crimes charges that he was "Ivan the Terrible," a brutal Nazi guard at the Treblinka death camp in Poland where 850,000 Jews were put to death in the gas chambers.

He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1988, but on July 29 the conviction was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court, which said it found "reasonable doubt" that Demjanjuk is "Ivan the Terrible."

This week, Israeli Supreme Court Justice Theodore Orr rejected all appeals by Holocaust survivors and others who wanted Demjanjuk tried on other war crimes charges, clearing the way for his return.

But the Israeli court decisions did nothing to heal the searing memory of the Holocaust that his case has evoked. Outside the empty Demjanjuk house Wednesday, New York Rabbi Avi Weiss, leader of the protest group, vowed to "shadow" Demjanjuk in the United States. "Until he is deported, at key moments in his life we will be there," Weiss said.

"He may be physically free, but emotionally, spiritually and soulfully, he's not a free man. He knows we are here."

by CNB