Finding aid for the Herbert S. Caron Collection of Ivan (John) Demjanjuk Research

Biography of Herbert S. Caron and Ivan (John) Demjanjuk

Born in New York, New York, in 1924, Herbert S. Caron studied psychology at the City College of New York and, after serving in the United States Army from 1943-1946, completed his graduate studies in social psychology, cultural anthropology, and behavioral study at Harvard University in 1953. By the time of his graduation, Caron had married his wife, Blanche, had four children, and he enjoyed a flourishing career, ultimately settling and practicing psychiatry in Cleveland, Ohio. A member of the Beth Israel (West Temple) Synagogue, Caron was instrumental in the movement for the immigration of Soviet Jewry to Israel and the United States, helping to found the Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism in 1963. Due to his avid interest in social justice issues, he took an active interest in the trials of Ivan (John) Demjanjuk and collected informational materials pertinent to the subject from the 1980s through the early 2000s.

Ivan (John) Demjanjuk was born in the Ukrainian village of Dubovye Makharintsy on April 3, 1920, to an impoverished family that suffered greatly from the forced famine of the early 1930s. In 1941, he was drafted into the Soviet Army and was ultimately wounded and captured by the Germans in Crimea in 1942. After the war, Demjanjuk lived in a displaced persons camp until 1952, when he and his family emigrated to the United States. Ultimately settling in the Cleveland suburb of Seven Hills, Ohio, Demjanjuk found work in the automotive industry and lived peacefully in the area with his family for the next two decades.

In 1977, the United States Justice Department, following accusations from Holocaust survivors, sued to revoke Demjanjuk's citizenship on the grounds that he had allegedly lied on his immigration application to conceal war crimes at the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland. In 1981, Demjanjuk was found guilty of these charges by the United States District Federal Court in Cleveland, and his citizenship was revoked. Shortly thereafter, the Israeli government requested his extradition, and he was tried for crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity in Israel. The prosecution alleged that, as a prisoner of war, Demjanjuk volunteered his service with the Schutzstaffel (SS) unit at the Trawniki training camp and served at Treblinka, where several survivors claimed to remember him as the notorious guard "Ivan the Terrible." On April 25, 1988, Demjanjuk was found guilty of these charges and sentenced to death. However, new documents came to light in 1991 that provided reasonable doubt regarding his service at Treblinka, and his conviction was overturned on July 29, 1993.

Further review of thousands of documents from the Soviet Archives provided evidence that Demjanjuk served in the Sobibor extermination camp and the Flossenburg concentration camp between March and October of 1943. The Israeli government declined to prosecute Demjanjuk and, in February of 1998, the District Court in Cleveland restored his United States citizenship. The following year, the Office of Special Investigations petitioned to have his citizenship revoked on the grounds of the new accusations and, in 2002, Demjanjuk lost his citizenship for the second time. In May of 2009, he was deported to Germany, where he was prosecuted and ultimately charged with 28,060 counts of accessory to murder. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison at the age of 91. Freed pending appeal of his conviction, Demjanjuk was moved to a German nursing home, where he died on March 17, 2012.

Scope and Content

The Herbert S. Caron Collection of Ivan (John) Demjanjuk Research, 1935-2009 and undated, consists of correspondence, a fact sheet, newspaper clippings, notes on court proceedings, and a summary of the Israeli court decision.

This collection is of value to researchers interested in the trials of Ivan (John) Demjanjuk and particularly the 1981 trial in Cleveland, Ohio, and subsequent responses from the Cleveland community, as well as the Jewish community as a whole. The documents also provide an overview of the context of the trial, details regarding the trials in both the United States and Israel, and give insight into the response of the Anti-Defamation League on the subject of Demjanjuk's conviction. Additionally, this collection will be beneficial to researchers with interest in Herbert S. Caron and his personal research on John Demjanjuk, as well as the general subjects of World War II, the Holocaust, and the service of the Nazi regime in German death camps.

Statement of Arrangement

Restrictions on Access

None.

The researcher should also consult MS 5334 JoAnn Lowe Papers.

Indexing Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

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Preferred Citation

[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 5335 Herbert S. Caron Collection of Ivan (John) Demjanjuk Research, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio.

Acquisition Information

Gift of Herbert S. Caron in 2009.

Processing Information

Processed by Whitney Stalnaker in 2015.

Detailed Description of The Collection