For some Jews, John (Ivan) Demjanjuk has long been a powerful symbol of the hatred that fueled the Holocaust. His 35-year legal case, the longest and most convoluted ever brought against a Nazi war criminal, ended last weekend with his death in a Bavarian nursing home.

He had been sentenced in Germany to five years in prison for helping to murder more than 28,000 Jews at Sobibor death camp but was free as he appealed his conviction. The fact that he did not die in a prison cell disturbed some people, who thought the court too lenient in releasing him.

But for others, he was a convicted war criminal, and his death was irrelevant.

“He was found guilty, and his guilt as an armed Sobibor death camp guard was finally established in a court of law,” said Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter and director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem.

“I’m upset he didn’t die in prison, but that’s the least of the twists and turns of this case. It could have been much worse,” Zuroff said. “The prosecutors in the U.S. and especially Eli Rosenbaum deserve enormous credit for their perseverance in making sure he didn’t end his life in Seven Hills, Ohio.”

Rosenbaum, longtime director of the former Office of Special Investigations, the Justice Department’s Nazi hunting unit, now is director of human rights enforcement strategy and policy for the criminal division’s human rights and special prosecutions section.

Germany’s decision to prosecute a low-level Nazi death-camp guard reinforces the message of individual responsibility for crimes committed during the Holocaust, said Zuroff.

The fact that the Munich court convicted Demjanjuk even though there was no evidence linking him to “a specific crime with a specific victim” has set a precedent that may assist in future prosecutions of Nazi perpetrators, said Zuroff.

The court determined that anyone serving in a “pure” death camp, without an adjacent labor camp, was guilty of at least accessory to murder, Zuroff said. This means that proving someone was a guard at Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor or Chelmno or served in the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) is sufficient for conviction, he said.

Zuroff has instituted “Operation Last Chance,” offering a reward for information leading to the conviction of former Nazis. So far, none of the leads has panned out, he told the CJN.

Ulrich Busch, Demjanjuk’s defense attorney in Munich, said his client’s “greatest wish” was to be buried in the suburban Cleveland area where his family lives, reported the German newspaper Oberbayerisches Volksblatt. Busch has asked the German authorities to arrange to transport the body here.

According to news reports March 21, a German undertaker said that Demjanjuk’s body would be flown to Cleveland next week.

Even though Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship had been revoked, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department said it would play no role in deciding where Demjanjuk would be buried.

“Legally speaking, nothing precludes him from being brought here for burial,” said Cleveland immigration attorney David Leopold. “It’s maybe a question for customs or the health department.”

The manual for U.S. consular officers, available online, stresses that they are supposed to facilitate the return of remains to the U.S. when asked to do so by a representative of the deceased, regardless of the deceased’s nationality, said Cleveland attorney Deborah Coleman.

While the U.S. controls its own borders, Coleman thought refusal to allow Demjanjuk’s remains would be an “extraordinary act and inconsistent with the policy conveyed in the State Department manual.”

When somebody has been found guilty of such awful atrocities, “he remains a symbol even in death,” said Leopold. “There are plenty of places in this world where he can be buried. I don’t think it should be in Cleveland, Ohio, or anywhere in the U.S.”

Demjanjuk’s grave could become a shrine to neo-Nazis, who will never forget he was mistakenly charged with being notorious death camp guard Ivan the Terrible, Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Ha’aretz. Zuroff also raised concern that a funeral here, likely at the church Demjanjuk attended, St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Parma, could result in a demonstration of support for him.

St. Vladimir issued a statement that it hoped one day Demjanjuk would be exonerated of being a concentration camp guard at Sobibor, just as he was cleared of being Ivan the Terrible. “We believe that new evidence will be uncovered once again finding him innocent of the latest accusations,” the church said. “Our parish and the Ukrainian community have always supported Mr. Demjanjuk and his claim of innocence of committing the crimes of which he was accused.”

Cynthia Dettelbach, CJN editor during most of the U.S. legal proceedings against Demjanjuk, attended part of Demjanjuk’s 1981 denaturalization trial with reporter Vivian Witt.

“Outside, members of Cleveland’s Ukrainian community picketed and protested,” Dettelbach said. “Inside, the real underlying issue was raised: Demjanjuk’s (alleged) role as a Nazi guard in concentration camps where Jews were tortured and put to death. The most gripping part of those early days in court was the searing testimonies of survivors who had been in places like Treblinka and remembered the sadistic guard they knew as Ivan the Terrible.”

Dettelbach recalled the peaks and valleys of the case against a “seemingly indestructible Demjanjuk. I’m only sorry he died in a nursing home instead of a jail cell.”

During much of the Demjanjuk case in Cleveland, the Ukrainian community here felt stigmatized by his alleged crimes, said Martin Plax, then-regional director of The American Jewish Committee. Plax worked to lessen hostilities and improve the relationship between the two communities.

Plax got to know Demjanjuk’s son, John Jr., and his then-son-in-law Edward Nishnic. When he first heard of Demjanjuk’s death, Plax said his first reaction was sorrow for the family.

“Whatever else he was, he was still their father,” said Plax. “There was a part of me that wanted to send a condolence note to the kids. Why should I hate them? It’s easy to be angry if you don’t know someone.”

He recalled Nishnic came to his office in 1992, while Demjanjuk was on death row in Israel, after he was convicted of being Treblinka gas chamber guard Ivan the Terrible.

The Soviet Union had collapsed and officials there were willing to share Holocaust-era documents from their archives with Israeli authorities, but not with Demjanjuk’s defense team. On Nishnic’s behalf, Plax contacted then-U.S. Rep. Ed Feighan to write a letter to the Russian ambassador demanding equal access to the evidence.

Feighan followed through and some of those documents showed another Ivan was probably Ivan the Terrible. The following year, the Supreme Court released Demjanjuk, saying new evidence indicated someone else was the Treblinka Ivan.

Plax also remembered a day during the 1981 trial when he went downtown and saw that Ukrainian survivors of the war and Jewish Holocaust survivors were talking about their wartime experiences before entering the courtroom. “We aren’t the only ones who are subject to hate,” Plax said.

To Betty Gold, who fled the Polish shetl of Trochenbrod, near the Ukrainian border, hiding in underground caves her father dug in the woods as Nazis gunned down nearly all of her neighbors, Demjanjuk “symbolized a lot of people who did what he did. The world should learn from history, so evil people like him won’t do it again.”

The Beachwood resident, 81, was glad Demjanjuk was convicted, assuming he was guilty, she said. “Let the rest of the world take notice. It might eliminate a bit of the atrocities in the world, because they still exist.”

“Obviously, it took a long time before he got what he deserved, to face justice,” said Zev Harel, 82, a founding member of the survivors’ organization Kol Israel and a former social work professor at Cleveland State University. “But I do feel bad for his family.”

Only 14 when he was sent to Auschwitz and later two other concentration camps, Harel said, “It was one thing if you were drafted into the Nazi SS. But (Demjanjuk) volunteered his services. I saw those volunteer (guards) use their positions to hurt inmates. It’s unfortunate he was identified as Ivan the Terrible, when it turned out he was not. But in a way, it felt comfortable that he faced justice in Germany and the German system found him guilty and he passed away there.”

“This marks the end of a decades-long effort in three countries that ultimately established the truth about John Demjanjuk’s Holocaust crimes and his effort to hide in a country that helped lead the fight against Nazi aggression,” said the Justice Department’s Rosenbaum, who spent most of his career running the office that discovered, investigated and prosecuted Nazi collaborators and guards who lied on their immigration papers and entered the U.S. fraudulently.

“Over the past three decades, the Justice Department, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and our partners have sought to identify and remove those individuals who denied so many the lives they themselves enjoyed, and to give voice to those who were silenced,” Rosenbaum said.

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