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Wednesday, February 25, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
THE FAR SIDE
By GARY LARSON
"Have you noticed that? ... You get stuck swinging behind some guy who's just ollygagging along, and sure enough he'll 'e wearin' a hat on the back of his head"
Holocaust survivor certain defendant was Nazi guard
United Press International
JERUSALEM - His words spilling forth in a torrent, a Holocaust survivor declared yesterday that he was convinced former U.S. automotor John Demanjuk was a Nazi guard who tortured and killed thousands of Jews in the Treblinka death camp.
Demjanjuk, accused of being a hated Treblinka guard called "Ivan the Terrible," listened quietly as Kiprushi, a machine operator, wound up two days of testimony by again charging that the defendant was "Ivan."
Epstein, the first Treblinka survivor to testify in Demjanjuk's war crimes trial, said Monday he was one of the most wronged in the Terrible" are one and the same.
American defense lawyer Mark O'Connor argued in the death-penalty case that Demjanjuk, 66, who maintains that he was never in Treblinka, was a victim of mistaken identity.
Epstein, a Polish Jew, said he clearly remembered the defendant as a sadistic Ukrainian gas chamber operator at the Nazi death camp in wartime Poland because Epstein watched him closely while being
forced to haul corpses out of the gas chambers.
"I am convinced that the man sitting opposite me is Ivan the Terri莉, who was in Treblinka," the slim, his voice unraveled, said, his voice quavering with anger.
"I saw him every day, every hour," Epstein said as he launched into a tirade against the defendant sitting only a few feet away.
"Ivan stood by the gas chambers as we took out the corpses. He looked on his work with pride. Pregnant women with stab wounds in their stomachs. Severed breasts. Women and children."
"Why? Because they were Jews."
"Why" because they were Jews. The outburst by Epstein, who was most concerned of his emotions yesterday after taking down and crying during testimony Monday, was triggered by Judge Dalia Dore asking whether Epstein had been in a position to see Ivan clearly in the death camp.
Doren is one of three senior Israeli judges hearing the trial that began on June 16.
Epstein, 61, who escaped from Treblinka with about 50 other Jews during an aborted inmate uprising in 1943, spoke in clipped, rapid-fire
Hebrew and said he could understand "a murderer who was sorry for his deeds, but Ivan was not sorry."
Treblinka survivors say the guard they called "Ivan the Terrible" whipped, stabbed and beat Jews as he herded them naked into the gas chambers at the camp where Holocaust estimate 900,000 people were killed
If convicted in Israel's first war crimes trial since the Adolf Eichmann case 25 years ago, Demjanjuk could be hung, as Eichmann was in 1962 Eichmann was the bureaucratic brains behind Adolf Hitler's "Final Solution," the extermination of the Jews.
Much of the cross-examination and testimony yesterday focused on minute details of Treblinka as O'Connor tried to cast doubt on Epstein's contention that Demjanjuk, whose Ukrainian name, Ivan, has been anglicized to John, was "Ivan the Terrible."
Demjanjuk said he was in the Soviet army when the Germans wounded and captured him in 1942. He said he was shuffled from one Nazi prison to another for most of the war.
On Campus
A seminar to provide new employees with a general overview of the University's accounting system is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. today in the Computer Center auditorium.
- "Strange Bees in a Strange Land: African Bees in the Americas," a University Forum, is scheduled for 11:40 a.m. today at Ecumenical Christian Ministries, 1204 Oread Ave. New York, and international careers is scheduled for p.m. today in Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union.
■ "Claray and Robert Schummam: A Creative Partnership," a music lecure, is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. today and Hawthorn Rectal Inc in Murphy Hall.
Campus Christians are scheduled to have a fellowship meeting at 6:30 p.m. today in the Northeast Conference Room of the Burge Union
The KU Doctor Who Appreciation Society is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. today in the Walnut Room of the Kansas Union.
"International Organizations,
Economic Adjustment and the Debt Crisis," a lecture, is scheduled for 8 p.m. today in Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union.
Student Senate is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. today in the Kansas Room of the Kansas Union.
HILLEL
Wednesday, Feb. 25
Executive Board Meeting
6:00 p.m.
U.J.A. training
7:00 p.m.
Hillel House
940 Mississippi
Thursday, Feb. 26
International Student
Solidarity Day for
Soviet Jewry
Letter-writing campaign
10:00 a.m.—3:00 p.m.
Kansas Union
Forum:
Rabbi David Oler
Congregation
Beth Shalom,
Kansas City
"The Lessons of
Anatoly Scharansky"
7:00 p.m.—9:00 p.m.
AEIH house
1116 Indiana
For more information call Hillel, 749-4242.
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