The documentary shows the legal battles of Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker in Cleveland accused of being a German-Nazi prison camp guard known as "Ivan the Terrible." Arrested, denaturalized as an American citizen and extradited to Israel in 1986, Demjanjuk was tried as a war criminal in a highly-publicized trial. Several survivors questioned at trial identified Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible. He was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to death, but his conviction was overturned by reasonable doubt, based in part on documents released after the Cold War that identified a different guard as Ivan the Terrible.[4]
Although there was not enough evidence to identify Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible, he was identified as a Nazi guard at the Sobibor extermination camp and several other camps. He was deported from the United States to Germany in 2009 and was charged with over 27,900 counts of accessory to murder. He was again found guilty in May 2011 and sentenced to five years in prison. Demjanjuk died in prison while his case was on appeal and so the German legal system will no longer seek a determination on his guilt or innocence.[5]
The documentary interviews several figures from the trial, including Demjanjuk's attorney and family members and Israeli and American prosecutors, journalists, and academics. It contains extensive footage from his first trial, including testimony from Holocaust survivors and archival footage from concentration camps.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki criticized the documentary for including a modern-day map of Poland, with the location of Nazi death camps marked on it. Morawiecki considered that it implied that Poland was responsible for the death camps instead of Nazi Germany. The map was shown as part of a segment from a 1985 television report that first detailed the allegations against Demjanjuk.[6] It was shown "repeatedly in various versions of the series", with no explanation that the camps were run by Germans.[5]
Morawiecki sent a letter to Netflix about the map, and Netflix agreed in November 2019 to "provide more information" onscreen to clearly show that the camps were operated by the Germans. Netflix was thanked by Morawiecki.[7][8][9]Vanity Fair noted on November 15, 2019 that it was "unclear" when Netflix would add those clarifications.[10]
^@PolandMFA(Ministry of Foreign Affairs) "Thank you for your reaction! We appreciate that @netflix raises difficult and important topics. We are sure that historical accuracy will be essential in your future productions." Twitter, 14 Nov. 2019. 2:16 p.m. from the original.Archived 2019-11-14 at the Wayback Machine
