Accused Nazi guard John Demjanjuk goes on trial

[alex revision]

Accused Nazi guard John Demjanjuk goes on trial

Thu Nov 26, 2009

http://www.reuters.com/article/world...5AP1UJ20091126

Accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk stands trial in Munich on Monday for helping to kill 27,900 Jews in World War Two.

Here are some facts about Demjanjuk:

LIFE DETAILS:

* Born on April 3, 1920, in Kiev, Ukraine, Demjanjuk said he was drafted into the Russian army in 1941, became a German prisoner of war a year later and served at German prison camps until 1944. He emigrated to the United States in 1951 and became a naturalized citizen in 1958.

DEMJANJUK ON TRIAL:

* He was stripped of his U.S. citizenship in 1981 and extradited to Israel, where he was sentenced to death in 1988 after Holocaust survivors said he was the notorious guard "Ivan the Terrible" at Treblinka where 870,000 people died.

* The Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction and death sentence in 1993 and freed him after newly-released records from the former Soviet Union showed another man, Ivan Marchenko, was probably the Treblinka guard.

* He returned to his home near Cleveland in 1993 and, in 1998, the United States restored his citizenship. But the U.S. Justice Department the following year refiled its case against him, arguing he had worked for the Nazis as a guard at three other death camps and had hidden the facts when he emigrated.

* A federal judge rescinded his citizenship in 2002 and he was ordered to be deported in 2005. He fought deportation for years in a number of courts but Germany finally issued an arrest warrant charging him with complicity in the death of 27,900 Jews and requested his deportation.

A NEW TRIAL:

* Germany's Constitutional Court turned down an appeal last month from Demjanjuk, clearing the way for a new trial to start. Demjanjuk was deported from the United States last May and has been in jail near Munich ever since.

* In July, the high court had turned down another appeal by Demjanjuk that his deportation from the United States infringed his basic rights.

* The Simon Wiesenthal Center has said Demjanjuk pushed men, women and children into gas chambers at the Sobibor death camp in what is now Poland. Demjanjuk has denied any role in the Holocaust and his family has argued he is too frail to stand trial.

[notmenomore]

I hope we will receive some good, contemporaneous trial reports as this travesty moves along.

The Germans claim that Demjanjuk "helped" to kill 27,900 jews. Not 27,899. Not 27,901. Just 27,900. Exactly.

It will be interesting to see if the prosecution can present evidence that Demjanjuk "helped" to kill even one named jew in the "Sobibor gas chambers." You know: simple things like date, time, identity, cause of death...

[The Bobster]

http://cbs3.com/topstories/John.Demj...2.1341131.html

Ohioan On Trial For Alleged Nazi Death Camp Role
John Demjanjuk Formally Charged with 27,900 Counts of Accessory To Murder During Second World War

MUNICH (AP) ― A German court put John Demjanjuk on trial Monday to face charges of being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews at a Nazi death camp, and his lawyer immediately accused the court of bias.



The 89-year-old retired Ohio autoworker arrived at the opening of the trial in a wheelchair to face the final chapter of some 30 years of efforts to prosecute him, wearing a navy baseball cap and covered in a light blue blanket.

After the first 90-minute session, Demjanjuk was returned to the courtroom lying flat on his back on a gurney, covered in blankets.

Doctors who had examined Demjanjuk before the second session began said he had complained of serious pain and was given a shot. They ordered the session be cut short, and it wrapped up 30 minutes later.

Demjanjuk's attorney had opened the proceedings by filing a motion against the court's judge and prosecutors, accusing them of treating the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk harsher than Germans who ran the Nazi's Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland.

Lawyer Ulrich Busch charged that the case should never have been brought to trial. He cited cases in which Germans assigned to Sobibor — where prosecutors allege Demjanjuk served as a guard — were acquitted.

"How can you say that those who gave the orders were innocent ... and the one who received the orders is guilty?" Busch told the court. "There is a moral and legal double standard being applied today."

Demjanjuk was deported in May from the United States to Germany, and has been in custody since then. He could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

A doctor who examined Demjanjuk two hours before the trial began said his vital signs were all stable.

Demjanjuk's family, however, says he is terminally ill. His trial has been limited to two 90-minute sessions per day.

Demjanjuk kept his eyes closed throughout the proceedings and remained mute in response to the judge's questions about his personal details. He repeatedly opened his mouth, apparently wincing in pain.

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said it was important the trial was finally taking place, but felt that Demjanjuk may have been trying to look more ill than he was.

"He has a vested interest in appearing as sick and as frail as possible. And he's going to play it up to the hilt," whined Zuroff, who attended the opening.

Demjanjuk became a household name in the 1980s when he was extradited by the United States for trial in Israel on charges that he was the notoriously brutal guard at the Nazi's Treblinka death camp who earned the moniker "Ivan the Terrible" for his deeds.

He was convicted in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and spent seven years in prison until Israel's Supreme Court in 1993 overturned the conviction. It ruled that another person, not Demjanjuk, was actually "Ivan the Terrible."

Demjanjuk, a former Soviet Red Army soldier, is now accused of volunteering to serve as a guard under the SS after being taken prisoner by the Nazis in 1942.

According to the indictment, he served as a simple "wachmann," or guard, under the SS. As such, he is the lowest-ranking person to go on trial for Nazi war crimes.

The prosecution argues that, even with no living witnesses who can implicate Demjanjuk in specific acts of brutality or murder, just being a guard at a death camp means he was involved in the Nazis' machinery of destruction.

Before that, however, the prosecution must prove that Demjanjuk, who is being tried in Munich because he lived in the area briefly after the war, really did serve at the camp.

Demjanjuk questions the authenticity of one of the main pieces of evidence — an SS identity card that prosecutors say features a photo of a young, round-faced Demjanjuk and that says he worked at the death camp.

He claims to be a victim of mistaken identity and says he was a Red Army draftee from Ukraine captured during the battle of Kerch in the Crimea in May 1942 and himself held prisoner until joining the so-called Vlasov Army of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others. That army was formed to fight with the Germans against the encroaching Soviets in the final months of the war.

Some of the most damning evidence comes from statements made by Ignat Danilchenko, a now-deceased Ukrainian who once served in the Soviet Army and was exiled to Siberia following World War II for helping the Nazis.

In 1979, he told the Soviet KGB that he served with Demjanjuk at Sobibor and that Demjanjuk "like all guards in the camp, participated in the mass killing of Jews."

But there are inconsistencies in the Danilchenko statements, and the defense questions their validity.

The trial will resume Tuesday. Court sessions are scheduled through May.

If convicted, Demjanjuk could be given credit in sentencing for some or all of the time he spent behind bars in Israel. Even if he is acquitted, however, Demjanjuk likely will have to remain in Germany as he has been stripped of his U.S. citizenship.