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.
“I wasn’t as scared as I thought I’d be but I had a funny feeling in my stomach. At that time I didn’t know what it was, but later on I found out they call them Butterflies. I did have Butterflies in my stomach.”
“I can remember it was kind of stormy and of course there’s no lights anywhere showing. We’re all in the darkness and the only thing ahead of me was another tug pulling another big monstrosity.”
“The tide was coming in so fast, the people were holding hands, I guess a lot of them couldn’t swim but they were holding hands till they got out of the boat. You had these half tracks that were goin’ up and they were poppin’ them off like crazy even the people, we were all together there and a lot of them got hit. You could see em’ goin’ over.”
“There were bodies all over the place, blood, arms, legs, the water was pretty red. You felt pretty bad when you see one of your own dead, it was pretty hard to take it.”
“ I never said much about it, because I don’t want to keep remembering it. The less I talk about it, the better it is.”
“I always had the feeling somebody was looking after me.”
“I’d watch the assault boats, the Higgins boats disappear into the smoke as they got closer to shore, there’d be a lot of smoke…We were waitin’ and waitin’ we didn’t know when we were supposed to join them, go ashore and I was disappointed. I was young then and I was disappointed. I wanted to be among the fir…I’m glad I wasn’t among the first or second, because most of the people who landed that landed before me laid there on the beach, they were dead.”
“I was surprised about how many dead people there were and they’re all young. The sad thing when I think about it now, at the time, you feel sorry for them, but you’re glad it’s not you, that’s how I felt, I feel sorry for these people, but I’m glad it’s not me and I think everybody felt that way.”
“They had informed us of what had happened, I think like the rest of the family it was difficult to accept because we hadn’t been with him. It was just a piece of paper that said he had been killed in action and it took awhile for it to set it and we really realized that once some of the letters that we had written him came back undelivered.”
“It was something I had always wanted to do, but I didn’t think I’d ever get to go to his grave in Normandy . It was quite an emotional experience for me to be there on his grave after nearly 50 years. It was like a connection, a reunion of souls maybe. I’ve often wondered what life would have been like for him?”
“I was actually proud of being part of it.” “I’m not a hero, I’m not hero. I’m just a survivor.”
“I always felt bad and I do today for all the servicemen that got killed in action. I think about it all the time.”
“I remember that day after I got wounded. The four of us was there and we were all crying.”
“Anybody would have done what I did I suppose. So I didn’t think of it as being a great hero. It had to be done and everybody did what they had to do.”
“A Hero? What does it mean, a hero? Can you tell me? Just because he did something which is very important? He had a job to do and that’s what I did. I had a job to do and I did it. I’m not a hero, I wouldn’t call myself a hero.”
by Donald A. McCall/Rhode Island
“On December 7, 1941 my mother, father, brother and I were at my uncle’s home in East Freetown, MA on a pre Christmas visit. As our usual Sunday early evening family time we were listening to one of our favorite radio show programs when President Franklin D. Roosevelt interrupted the program to announce that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and that we were now at war. I had turned 10 years of age in May of that year and the full impact of a war wasn’t fully understood at that time. It wasn’t very long afterward that the whole of America was in union with each other to get involved and take care of the situation.
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“We headed into the beach, it was still dark but then as we headed into the beach, all the ships start firing, it was one awesome sight. All of a sudden, bullets were hitting on the side of the ship and the water and I looked into the well of the boat and there was 35 soldiers in there and I don’t think there was an atheist in there because every one of them was making the sign of the cross as we were going in and I happened to look….I looked to the right and I seen a boat get hit…and that’s when I realized what we were going into. As I hit the beach, Wally Lawton lowered the ramp and the soldiers start pouring out and I seen them droppin’, I seen them getting shot, I seen their faces blown off, God, it’s a sight I’ll never forget, it’s been in my mind since. This is the first time I ever talked about it, I hope its my last…As they were going off, there was one soldier there who didn’t want to leave, I guess he froze, he seen what happened in front of him and we were instructed not to take anybody back unless they were wounded or dead. As I lifted up my arm to tell him to get off, I was shot over here and it came out my back.”
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“When we finally got over the shore, I looked down and saw the beach of France and I thought beautiful beach down there. Before it got very much further, maybe a minute, maybe five minutes, I don’t know, I started seeing flak coming up at the plane. It wasn’t very long after that that somebody said Stout has been hit. I got back there and put him on the bucket seat and laid him down. At that point somebody yelled at me, the green light is on Lt.. Now, I’d already had the boys half stand-up and hook-up because the red light had been on earlier and at that point I turned and hollered to the group Geronimo! Lets go! And I turned and went out.”
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