By Agencies
John Demjanjuk was yesterday charged in Germany with more than 29,000 counts of accessory to murder for his time as a guard at the Nazi Sobibor death camp in Poland in 1943. “In this capacity, he participated in the accessory to murder of at least 29,000 people of the Jewish faith,” Munich prosecutors said in a statement after issuing an arrest warrant for the alleged former SS guard.
Demjanjuk, 88, who lives in a Cleveland suburb in the United States, was extradited to Israel in 1986 on suspicion of being the sadistic Nazi guard known as “Ivan the Terrible” of the Treblinka death camp. After being convicted by a lower court, he was then acquitted by the Supreme Court on grounds of doubt. Since the trial evidence has been found to establish Demjanjuk’s SS membership and that he served as a guard in Sobibor. This is what he is expected to face trial for in Germany. Advertisement
Prosecutors will seek the extradition of the retired Ohio auto worker from the United States. Demjanjuk denies involvement.
Efraim Zuroff, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, yesterday commended the German prosecutors’ decision and told Haaretz that Demjanjuk’s extradition to Germany could be carried out “within weeks.” A German prosecution spokesman said he could not say whether Demjanjuk would be extradited or deported from the U.S. and when.
A native of Ukraine, Demjanjuk emigrated to the U.S. in 1952 and gained citizenship in 1958. In denying involvement in war crimes, he has said he served in the Soviet army and became a prisoner of war when he was captured by Germany in 1942.
Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship was restored in 1998, but the U.S. Justice Department renewed its case, saying he was a Nazi guard and could be deported for falsifying information on his entry and citizenship applications in the 1950s. A December 2005 U.S. court ruling determined that he could be deported to his native Ukraine or to Germany or Poland, but Demjanjuk spent several years challenging that ruling.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court chose not to consider Demjanjuk’s appeal against deportation, clearing the way for the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which oversees cases against former Nazis, to seek his removal from the United States. But it was unclear which country would take him - his native Ukraine, Poland or Germany.
The Munich prosecutor’s office, which is handling the case because Demjanjuk spent time at a refugee camp in the area after the war, said it was working on the extradition request with the German government. The prosecutors said Demjanjuk will be formally charged before a judge once he is extradited to Germany. Germany started investigating Demjanjuk’s case after the U.S. decided to revoke his citizenship and the Supreme Court rejected his appeal against the deportation.
Sources close to the investigation told Haaretz that the Office of Special Investigations had urged the Germans to open the investigation against Demjanjuk. The German investigators worked on the case together with the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, and said last year they were “convinced” Demjanjuk served as a guard in the Sobibor camp from March 27 to September 16 in 1943, and was an accomplice to the murder of at least 29,000 Jews.
Demjanjuk is suspected of being part of the SS auxiliary responsible for gathering the ghetto Jews and guarding them in the concentration and death camps, and personally leading Jews to the gas chambers there in 1943.
One of the central pieces of evidence to be brought against Demjanjuk if he is brought to trial in Munich is his SS membership card, whose authenticity has been verified by an expert in the Munich police, Munich’s state prosecutor Anton Winkler said.
Demjanjuk had claimed that the card was forged.
Winkler said last month that his office has been examining evidence against Demjanjuk since December 30, and hopes to have him extradited from the United States for a trial in Germany as soon as possible - possibly in the next month. “We’re working as fast as possible and assume Demjanjuk will be brought to trail here,” Winkler said. “As soon as we have finished preparing the charges, the extradition process will move forward.”
Demjanjuk’s wife Vera told a reporter of the German newspaper Bild that her husband was unwell and not available for an interview. She has been married to John for 60 years and moved with him to America in 1952, where he changed his name from Ivan and got a job with Ford, Bild reported.
Vera told Bild “his brain is not functioning correctly. One day he recognizes everything, the next day he has forgotten it all. He goes to the doctor for injections once a week, otherwise he wouldn’t be around much longer.”
Asaf Uni contributed to this report.
