In Israel, John Demjanjuk is sentenced to death for war crimes committed in World War II.
John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demjanjuk; Ukrainian: '; 3 April 1920 17 March 2012) was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, Majdanek, and Flossenbrg. Demjanjuk became the center of global media attention in the 1980s, when he was tried and convicted in Israel after being misidentified as "Ivan the Terrible", a notoriously cruel watchman at Treblinka extermination camp. In 1993 the verdict was overturned. Shortly before his death, he was tried and convicted in Germany as an accessory to 28,000 murders at Sobibor.
Born in Soviet Ukraine, Demjanjuk was conscripted into the Red Army in 1940. He fought in World War II and was taken prisoner by the Germans in spring 1942. He was recruited by the Germans and trained at Trawniki concentration camp, going on to serve at Sobibor extermination camp and at least two concentration camps. After the war he married a woman he met in a West German displaced persons camp, and emigrated with her and their daughter to the United States. They settled in Seven Hills, Ohio, where he worked in an auto factory and raised three children. Demjanjuk became a US citizen in 1958.
In August 1977, Demjanjuk was accused of having been a Trawniki man. Based on eyewitness testimony by Holocaust survivors in Israel, he was identified as the notorious Treblinka extermination camp guard known as "Ivan the Terrible". Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel in 1986 for trial. In 1988, Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death. He maintained his innocence, claiming that it was a case of mistaken identity. In 1993 the verdict was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court, based on new evidence that cast reasonable doubt over his identity as "Ivan the Terrible". Although the judges agreed that there was sufficient evidence to show that Demjanjuk had served at Sobibor, Israel declined to prosecute. In September 1993 Demjanjuk was allowed to return to Ohio. In 1999, US prosecutors again sought to deport Demjanjuk for having been a concentration camp guard, and his citizenship was revoked in 2002. In 2009, Germany requested his extradition for over 27,900 counts of acting as an accessory to murder: one for each person killed at Sobibor during the time when he was alleged to have served there as a guard. He was deported from the US to Germany in that same year. On 12 May 2011, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.
According to legal scholar Lawrence Douglas, in spite of serious missteps along the way, the German verdict brought the case "to a worthy and just conclusion". After the conviction, Demjanjuk was released pending appeal. He lived at a German nursing home in Bad Feilnbach, where he died on 17 March 2012. Having died before a final judgment on his appeal could be issued, under German law, Demjanjuk remains technically innocent. In January 2020, a photograph album by Sobibor guard Johann Niemann was made public; some historians have suggested that a guard who appears in two photos may be Demjanjuk.
Israel (; Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל, romanized: Yīsrāʾēl; Arabic: إِسْرَائِيل, romanized: ʾIsrāʾīl), officially the State of Israel (מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل, Dawlat ʾIsrāʾīl), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea, and shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east, and Egypt to the southwest; it is also bordered by the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively. Tel Aviv is the economic and technological center of the country, while its seat of government is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is unrecognized internationally.Israel has evidence of the earliest hominid migrations out of Africa. Canaanite tribes are archaeologically attested in the region since the Middle Bronze Age, while the kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged during the Iron Age. The northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE, and the Kingdom of Judah was incorporated into the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. Some of the Judean population was exiled to Babylon, only to return after Cyrus the Great conquered the region. The Maccabean Revolt against Seleucid rule led to an independent Hasmonean kingdom by 110 BCE. The kingdom became a client state of the Roman Republic in 63 BCE, following which the Herodian dynasty was installed by 37 BCE, and in 6 CE, the former kingdom was finally incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province of Judaea (Latin: Iudaea). A series of unsuccessful Jewish revolts against the Romans that broke out during the first and second centuries resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem, the expulsion of many Jews, and the renaming of Iudaea to Syria Palaestina. In the 7th century CE, the Byzantine-ruled Levant was taken by Arab forces and incorporated into the Rashidun Caliphate. It remained in Muslim hands until the First Crusade of 1096–1099 re-established a Christian sovereign presence; Crusader control was partly dismantled by the Ayyubids in 1187, but ultimately lasted until 1291. The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt extended its control over the region by the end of the 13th century until its defeat in 1516 to the Ottoman Empire. During the 19th century, a national awakening among Jews led to the founding of Zionism, a movement that espouses the return of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, also known as the Land of Israel, which was followed by the immigration of diaspora Jews.
Following World War I, Britain controlled the entirety of the territory of what makes up Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Jordan as a League of Nations mandate. After World War II, the newly formed United Nations adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency but rejected by Arab leaders. Following a civil war within Mandatory Palestine between Yishuv and Palestinian Arab forces, Israel declared independence at the termination of the British Mandate. The war internationalized into the 1948 Arab–Israeli War between Israel and several surrounding Arab states and concluded with the 1949 Armistice Agreements that saw Israel in control of most of the former mandate territory, while the West Bank and Gaza were held by Jordan and Egypt respectively. Israel has since fought several wars with Arab countries, and since the Six-Day War in June 1967 has occupied several territories, and continues to occupy the Golan Heights and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, though whether Gaza remains occupied following the Israeli disengagement is disputed. Israel has effectively annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, though these actions have been rejected as illegal by the international community, and established settlements within the occupied territories, which the international community also considers illegal under international law. Efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in a final peace agreement, while Israel has signed peace treaties with both Egypt and Jordan, and more recently has normalized relations with a number of other Arab countries.
In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish and democratic state, and as the nation-state of the Jewish people. The country is a liberal democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation, and universal suffrage. The prime minister serves as head of government and the Knesset is the unicameral legislature. Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, and has a population of over 9 million people as of 2021. It has the world's 31st-largest economy by nominal GDP, and is the most developed country that is currently in conflict. The standard of living in Israel is the highest in the Middle East, and the country ranks high on the global HDI list. Israel also ranks among the world's top countries by percentage of citizens with military training, percentage of citizens holding a tertiary education degree, research and development spending by GDP percentage, women's safety, life expectancy, innovativeness, and happiness.