The family of Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk who died in Germany last week aged 91 are demanding he be buried in suburban Cleveland despite fears his grave would become a magnet for neo-Nazis.
Ukraine-born Demjanjuk came to the U.S. in 1952, claiming to have spent much of World War II as an inmate in a German prisoner of war camp.
He settled in the middle-class Cleveland suburb of Seven Hills where he worked as a mechanic at Ford Motor Co.'s engine plant in nearby Brook Park.
But in 1977 the Justice Department alleged he had hidden his past as the feared Treblinka death camp guard 'Ivan the Terrible' and revoked his citizenship.
The Israeli Supreme Court later returned him to the U.S. after it received evidence that another Ukrainian, not Demjanjuk, was Ivan the Terrible.
However a Munich court convicted Demjanjuk in May 2011 of helping to kill the Jews at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland and sentenced him to five years in prison but freed because of his age.
Prosecutors had faced several hurdles in proving Demjanjuk's guilt, with no surviving witnesses to his crimes and heavy reliance on wartime documents, namely a Nazi ID card indicating he had worked at Sobibor.
Defense attorneys said the card was a Soviet-made fake.
Demjanjuk died in a German nursing home while awaiting appeal and his family in Seven Hills, Ohio, wants to return his body for burial.
Efraim Zuroff, who leads the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, believes funeral in his adopted hometown would turn into a spectacle
He said: 'I have no doubt that a funeral in Seven Hills would turn into a demonstration of solidarity and support for Demjanjuk, who's the last person on earth who deserves any sympathy, frankly.
And Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, who notes that there are about 170 active neo-Nazi groups in the U.S., said his grave could become a shrine for neo-Nazis in the U.S. because they will never forget he was once identified as Ivan the Terrible.
He said: 'For neo-Nazis, I think it's entirely possible that a Demjanjuk grave becomes a monument to the alleged evils of the Jews.
Demjanjuk had always fierecly guarded his privacy, posting a 'no trespassing' sign outside his house and turning aside interview requests over the decades.
His attorney appealed Monday to German authorities to arrange for his body to be sent home to Ohio, and son John Demjanjuk Jr. confirmed that, but there was no word on any arrangements or whether a funeral might be done in secret.
In Germany, the bones of Rudolf Hess, a deputy to Adolf Hitler, were exhumed under cover of darkness, burned and secretly scattered at sea after his grave became a shrine for thousands of neo-Nazis.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said Demjanjuk didn't have the stature that would attract adoring neo-Nazis to his grave.
'He's not an Adolf Hitler, Hier said.
Any hometown burial arrangements likely would be at Demjanjuk's longtime church, St. Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in nearby Parma. Parishioners and the wider Ukrainian-American community had been a protective cocoon of support for Demjanjuk for decades.
The church signaled Sunday that it was holding out hope his name might be cleared. Just as Demjanjuk's conviction as Ivan the Terrible had been overturned,.
A church statement read: 'So, too, in time, we believe that new evidence will be uncovered once again finding him innocent of the latest accusations.
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.
The U.S. Department of Justice, whose Nazi-hunting office directed the pursuit of Demjanjuk in the U.S., declined to comment Monday on the burial issue.
A U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said the U.S. Consulate General in Munich 'is providing consular assistance to Mr. Demjanjuk's family in the United States.' There was no elaboration, but such help could include repatriation of remains.
Hier said it might be hard to find a cemetery that would accept Demjanjuk.
If it were me or my family, I wouldn't want to have anyone buried near a Nazi war criminal,' he said. 'They are a disgrace to mankind.'
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