John Demjanjuk was a Ukrainian national born in the village of Dub Macharenzi on April 3, 1920. He was a tractor driver on the collective farm of his native village. In 1940, the Red Army conscripted Demjanjuk. After the Nazi invasion, he served in the artillery in the Crimea until being captured by the Germans in May 1942. After the war ended he immigrated to the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1952. Little is known about the intervening ten years of his life.

In 1977 Demjanjuk was accused of being "Ivan the Terrible," a Nazi war criminal from the infamous Treblinka death camp. It was alleged that he ran the gas chamber there, and that he earned his nickname as a result of his brutal treatment of the camp's inmates. The accusation triggered a court action, filed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, to strip Demjanjuk of his U.S. citizenship. He lost this court case and his citizenship in 1981. The...