The Devil Next Door
THE DEVIL NEXT DOOR - NETFLIX
The Devil Next Door is one of the latest additions to NETFLIX’s extensive catalogue of documentary series and a true-crime miniseries, similar to the smash hit Making a Murderer. Directed by Yossi Bloch and Daniel Sivan, The Devil Next Door is a five-episode in-depth look at the high-profile case of John Demjanjuk, a Ukranian immigrant who had lived quietly in Cleveland, Ohio, until the 1980s, when evidence linking him to a sadistic prison guard at the Treblinka death camp nicknamed “Ivan the Terrible” was uncovered. Demjanjuk was denaturalized as a US citizen and extradited to Israel to be put on trial and a media circus was created over the possible mistaken identity and the controversial televised trial.
The Devil Next Door borrows a lot of stylistic choices from Making a Murderer, from bird’s-eye view of various locations to talking-head interviews with those involved in the trial, but the content is much darker than the usual true-crime documentary. The looming presence of the Holocaust in the narrative and the graphic images from concentration camps can make the series extremely difficult for some viewers to handle. The emotional testimony from Holocaust survivors will upset even the most hardened of viewers, especially the testimony from Gustav Borax who seems to have lost some grip of reality due to his experiences and believed he arrived in Florida by train.
Testimonies like Borax’s raises serious ethical issues during the trial about the legitimacy of the survivors’ testimony and questions are raised if their age and mental conditions allow them to give sound testimony, especially in a trial where Demjanjuk’s life is on the line. Factoring in a possible conspiracy by the Soviet Union to split the Ukranian-American and Jewish-American communities with forged documents and shredded evidence favouring Demjanjuk’s innocence from the Office of Special Investigations, The Devil Next Door truly goes in-depth with the struggle between pathos, ethos, and logos in Demjanjuk’s case.
The Devil Next Door contains archival footage of Demjanjuk’s trial in Israel, where tensions constantly flared between Demjanjuk’s defence and the Jewish prosecutors and audiences that would stop at nothing to get justice. However, the documentary also covers the internal tensions between Demjanjuk’s legal team, from his first chief defense attorney Mark O’Connor’s courtroom experience getting the better of him to Israeli lawyer Yoram Sheftel’s public imagery damage control for choosing to represent Demjanjuk to the mysterious circumstances surrounding appeal lawyer Dov Eitan’s death.
The Devil Next Door serves as an exciting and disturbing courtroom drama with constant twists from new pieces of evidence being revealed that shake the case, but the final episode of the series is definitely where the filmmakers choose their side and argue why Demjanjuk’s case is still relevant to today. The final episode of the series not only covers the aftermath of Demjanjuk’s trial in the 1980s and offers the incriminating evidence of his real character, but offers disturbing revelations about America’s treatment of former Nazis during the Cold War. Demjanjuk’s trial could have possibly set a precedent that not only the masterminds behind genocides would be guilty in a court of law but also the footsoldiers who carry out the order. Ultimately, the film condemns America’s ambivalence towards Nazi emigrants and looks at how it has transformed into modern America’s neo-Nazi movements.
Another substantial addition to NETFLIX’s abundant library of features for documentary fans, The Devil Next Door may be presented as just another true-crime documentary but content-wise and thematically, it is not. The Devil Next Door is thorough, captivating, disturbing and thought-provoking, challenging what audiences know about the aftermath of the Holocaust and Nazism and offering a harrowing example of what happens when the justice system does not listen to the victims.
THE DEVIL NEXT DOOR is streaming exclusively on NETFLIX November 4th 2019
