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Nazi war crime suspect greeted by boos after 30-year wait for justice
Ross Lydall and Allan Hall30 Nov 2009
He was wheeled from an ambulance into Court 101 more than an hour late.
But John Demjanjuk's arrival in a German court for the last high-profile Nazi war crimes trial marked the end of a 30-year effort to bring him to justice.
Families of his alleged victims crowd-ing into the Munich court greeted his lawyer Ulrich Busch's opening speech with boos and hisses as he suggested that others were more guilty - and that Demjanjuk had lost his rights just like those who died in the gas chambers.
For decades Demjanjuk lived with his family in the US, working incognito in Ohio as a car factory worker.
According to the prosecution, the 89-year-old man barely visible under a baseball cap and blue blanket is an accomplice to the murder of 27,900 mainly Dutch Jews at a Nazi concentration camp.
Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-born soldier in the Red Army, is alleged to have worked as a guard at Sobibor camp in occupied Poland for around four months in 1943 after being taken prisoner by the Nazis during a battle in the Crimean peninsula.
He maintains that he is the victim of mistaken identity, while his legal team have mounted multiple defences, ranging from the acquittal of more senior figures to the poor state of Demjanjuk's health and German courts' lack of legitimacy to try the offences.
Mr Busch said Demjanjuk, who listened to evidence via a translator, was himself a prisoner of war and would have been killed if he had failed to assist the Nazi guards to force naked Jewish prisoners into gas chambers.
To boos, he compared Demjanjuk to Thomas Blatt, an 88-year-old Jew who escaped death in the camp but saw his family killed.
Mr Blatt, one of 35 co-plaintiffs, was in court today.
Mr Busch said of his client: "By serving the Nazis he was like Thomas Blatt, a prisoner who was also in Sobibor and who had no choice.
"The people who served the Nazis in these camps had no choice because they would have become the next victims of murder."
He added: "The court has no jurisdiction to single out someone so low down because they have let free people who were more responsible."
But Oliver Wallisch, a lawyer for the co-plaintiffs, said: "It is disgusting to compare these men to the Jews.
"They had better food, better conditions, they were allowed to go out and they enriched themselves with the loot they took from their victims. None of these privileges were afforded to the Jews."
The prosecution claims Demjanjuk, whose conviction as "Ivan the Terrible" in the Treblinka death camp was overturned by an Israeli court after seven years, helped to lead 15 train-loads of Jews to their death.
Israeli judges quashed their death sentence against him but said they were convinced he had served instead at Sobibor.
The German prosecution relies upon the statements of 23 now-dead witnesses. Crucially, there is no surviving witness able to implicate Demjanjuk as a camp guard.
The prosecution will also rely heavily on Demjanjuk's identity card from an SS training academy at Trawniki, where guards for the death camp were schooled.
Prosecutors have summoned two Germans who served at Trawniki and who will testify that Demjanjuk was one of its graduates.
Prosecutor Hans-Joachim Lutz in- sisted Demjanjuk, despite his frail appearance, was capable of standing trial.
He said it was "important for Germany and the world that we learn of the crimes he carried out as a volunteer in a death camp". The trial continues.
How Demjanjuk came to trial
1920: Born in Ukraine.
1942: Captured by Germans while in Soviet Red Army.
1952: Emigrates to US and claims to have been in German prisoner of war camp.
1958: Gains US citizenship.
1977: Justice Department trys to revoke citizenship, alleging he hid past as Nazi death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible".
1981: Citizenship revoked.
1986: Extradited to Israel for trial.
1988: Convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentenced to death.
1993: Israel's Supreme Court overturns 1988 verdict and returns him to US.
1998: Regains US citizenship but loses it four years later.
March 11, 2009: German prosecutors issue arrest warrant and seek deportation from US.
May 11, 2009: Berlin court rejects appeal against deportation. Demjanjuk flown to Germany.
July 13, 2009: Prosecutors charge Demjanjuk with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder.
Reader views (11)
What is the difference between Tony Blair and Bush and this man?
Blair and Bush have killed many innocent civilians in Iraq and are free.
This old man is judged for a crime without a witness.
- Antonietta Wheeler, Paris - France, 01/12/2009 00:08
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First of all, there are still witnesses alive. Also, this man is a wily faker. He plays to the camera. He did the same thing when the Feds came to pick him up. Then they filmed him jumping into his son-in-law's car unassisted.
- Frankie Frank, La Jolla, CA USA, 30/11/2009 23:19
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Surely this guy will not try the old trick that Ronnie Biggs pulled and the one whom we sent home to Libya?Ill
health my foot. They are both alive and well at the moment when we were all told by his son that Biggs had only days/hours to live. Don't let this man pull the same trick please.
Amber in Mitcham
- Amber In Mitcham, Mitcham Surrey, 30/11/2009 19:48
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As clearly stated above, he was tried in Israel and acquitted and then released. Why is he now being tried again for the same crime?
- Manny Goldstein, London, England, 30/11/2009 19:44
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Great,, just harass him to dead,,, keep the trial going until he dies !!!!!!
- Stan Shaw, DeLand Florida USA, 30/11/2009 18:42
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If he was at home in the USA and hadn't been captured I'm sure he wouldn't be putting on such a show of being so ill. Make him suffer until the end of his days.
- Henry Moss, lake oswego oregon usa, 30/11/2009 17:52
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It doesn't matter how long ago his crimes were.The perpetrators of those depraved and evil acts MUST be punished
- Lynn, Kingston, 30/11/2009 17:00
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@ Kevin Sullivan, LONDON
Don't be fooled by the act.
- Frank, Home Counties, England., 30/11/2009 16:55
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If there are no witnessess, how on earth can he be found guilty? This guy was a prison guard, he was no Hitler, Himmler, or Eichmann, or high ranking nazi, he was not even an NCO! He is 89 years old, got approx. one year to live, and, will be carried into court on a stretcher. What possible purpose can this trial serve? If you want examples of mans inhumanity to man, there are plenty of examples to choose from around the world at this present moment
- Kevin Sullivan, LONDON, 30/11/2009 16:17
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My father was a British soldier in the liberation of Belsen in April 1945. He always told us to make no mistake of what he witnessed and never to permit anyone to say that it never happened. There can be no statute of limitations for anyone who partcipated in the inhuman cruelty meted out on defenceless humans by the Germans and their fellow travellers.
- Jon, London, 30/11/2009 15:47
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If this man is truly guilty of the horrendous crimes he is accused of (and the case for the German prosecution does look compelling) then I for one have no sympathy for his age and frailty. Nazi barbarians should be brought to justice no matter what their age: so many never had the chance to live even half the life span that he has.
- Alan, London, 30/11/2009 14:47
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