Court: Demanjuk's death makes appeal moot While the judges said the entire case is now moot, the court in Cleveland also upheld a lower court ruling that Demanjuk's claim he had been denied access to an FBI memo questioning the authenticity of a Nazi ID card has no merit, The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. The agent in 1985 suggested the card was fabricated by the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency, but the court said the agent had not seen the card himself. Lawyers for the Demanjuk family continued the case after his death in March in an effort to get Social Security benefits restored to his widow. The court said the only way Demanjuk could have a valid Social Security claim would be if he was readmitted to the country as a legal permanent resident. Demanjuk, born in Ukraine in 1920, came to the United States in the 1950s and became a citizen. He spent his later years fighting to keep that citizenship and his residency. In the 1980s, he was tried in Israel on charges that he was "Ivan the Terrible," a notorious concentration camp guard, convicted and sentenced to death. He was allowed to return to the United States after his conviction was overturned. Demanjuk was stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 2002 and deported to Germany in 2009, where he was convicted of complicity in deaths at the Sobibor camp.