A new docu-series ready to hit your Netflix feed focuses on a man who once lived in Northeast Ohio.
"The Devil Next Door" is a five-part series on the story of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian man drafted into the Soviet Army in 1941. According to the New York Times, Demjanjuk was held captive by the Germans in Crimea, which led to heinous accusations from Holocaust survivors.
Demjanjuk was identified as Ivan the Terrible, a German-trained Ukrainian man who oversaw Nazi concentration camp gas chambers.
See the trailer for the Netflix series, which debuts Nov. 4, below:
Demjanjuk, his wife and three children moved to Seven Hills, just outside Cleveland, in 1973. The New York Times reports the Justice Department sued to revoke Demjanjuk's citizenship in 1977 on claims he lied on his immigration application to conceal his war crimes. His citizenship was revoked in 1981, and he would stand trial as Ivan the Terrible in Israel, where he was deported in 1986.
According to the Times, prosecutors' evidence included a Nazi ID card with Demjanjuk’s alleged photograph. The card had his name, birthday and father's name, while the man in the photo had a scar identical to Demjanjuk’s.
Demjanjuk was accused of murdering and torturing thousands at the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland from 1942-43. His defense argued survivors' testimonies were based on memories that were 40 years old. It also questioned the ID card, claiming the information didn't all match.
Meanwhile, Demjanjuk testified he was a prisoner at Chelmno in Poland, then in Austria through the war's end, according to the Times.
Demjanjuk was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1988, but his conviction was struck down in 1993 on new evidence that the real Ivan the Terrible was another Ukrainian man named Ivan Marchenko.
Demjanjuk was released and returned to Cleveland, but his citizenship was revoked again on accusations he had been a Nazi guard at a trio of extermination camps in Poland and Bavaria. According to the Times, he was deported to Germany in 2009, where he stood trial for 27,900 counts accusing him of killings at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland.
After his conviction in 2011, Demjanjuk was sentenced to serve five years in prison. He died at a nursing home in 2012 while awaiting an appeal, according to Britannica. He was 91.