A Harvard official claims that former Cleveland auto worker John Demjanjuk, who is due to go on trial today in Israel, is actually "Ivan the Terrible," the guard who operated the gas chambers that killed over one million Jews during the Second World War.

Allan A. Ryan Jr., a lawyer in the office of Harvard's General Counsel, served as the director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations from 1980 to 1983. He said yesterday that there is "sufficient evidence to prove Demjanjuk guilty."

Demjanjuk lived in the U.S. for 30 years before being extradited to Israel this past February to face charges under Israeli law. He is accused of herding Jews to their deaths at the concentration camp in Treblinka, Poland in 1942-'43.

On Monday, an Israeli Supreme Court rejected the defendant's appeal for release, clearing the way for the trial to begin today rather than the original January 19 date.

Ryan, who oversaw the prosecution of the 1981 case stripping Demjanjuk of his American citizenship, says that there is no certainty that the Israeli Supreme Court will start to hear the case today. Ryan said that once it began "the trial would probably run for a matter of several weeks rather than several days or months".

The state is scheduled to call eight survivors of the Treblinka camp who are ready to identify Demjanjuk as the Nazi prison camp guard. A former guard is also reportedly prepared to identify the defendant as Ivan the Terrible. Ryan notes that the witnesses identified Demjanjuk's 1951 visa photo out of eight unmarked photographs as the Nazi guard.

Furthermore, Ryan claims, Demjanjuk has changed his alibi about his wartime whereabouts three times.

Another crucial piece of evidence is an i.d. card allegedly labelling Demjanjuk as a member of an elite Ukranian POW group that was trained by the Nazi SS as prison guards for Treblinka. The card, which includes a photo and personal data, is especially important because the Germans destroyed all Treblinka records when they abandoned the site in 1943.

Some of Demjanjuk's family and church figures have taken his case on a speaking tour to raise funds for his defense. The tour has criticized the Justice Department's, and specifically Ryan's, role in the case.

These supporters claim that the Soviets tampered with the i.d. card. They also point to claims that Ivan the Terrible was killed in a 1943 prison insurrection and that several other witnesses were not able to identify the Demjanjuk's photograph.