US Man Faces Death Camp Charges in Germany

John Demjanjuk Formally Charged with 27,900 Counts of Accessory to Murder During Second World War

(AP)  The legal saga of John Demjanjuk neared its final chapter as prosecutors set the stage for one of Germany's highest-profile war crime trials in years — formally charging the retired U.S. auto worker with involvement in the murder of 27,900 people at a Nazi death camp.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was once sentenced in Israel to death, then acquitted by the country's Supreme Court in 1993 of being the notorious guard known as "Ivan the Terrible" at the Treblinka death camp. Now the 89-year-old stands accused of being part of the death machine at another camp in Poland — Sobibor — and a Germany more than 60 years removed from World War II will revisit the demons of its past once again.

For Germany, the decision to try Demjanjuk was swift: formal charges relating to his alleged time as a Sobibor guard in 1943 were filed just two months after Demjanjuk landed in the country after a lengthy but fruitless court battle to avoid deportation from the U.S.

Filing charges typically takes several months in Germany. Monday's move underlined authorities' determination to move forward with efforts to exact justice for Nazi-era atrocities.

"The effort to bring Demjanjuk to justice sends a very powerful message that the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrator," said the top Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Efraim Zuroff, who described the charges as "an important step forward."

The Munich state court must now decide whether to accept the charges — typically a formality — and set a date for the trial. Court spokeswoman Margarete Noetzel said the trial was unlikely to start before the autumn.

Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk Jr., described the charges as "a farce" and raised anew concerns over whether the 89-year-old's frail health would allow him a fair trial. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

"As long as my father remains alive, we will defend his innocence as he has never hurt anyone anywhere," he told The Associated Press in an e-mail. "They have hurried to justify the deportation and the violation of his legal and human rights with sensational charges but it is all a farce and could never withstand the test of litigation."

Demjanjuk Jr. said his father is suffering from an incurable leukemic bone marrow disease.

However, doctors earlier this month determined that Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN'-yuk) was fit to stand trial so long as court hearings do not exceed two 90-minute sessions per day. He has been in custody in Munich since his arrival May 12.

Elderly, frail Nazi suspects with health problems have stood trial in the past: in 2001, Anton Malloth, an 89-year-old former guard at the Theresienstadt fortress in then-occupied Czechoslovakia, sat through his trial in Munich in a wheelchair, connected to an IV drip. He was sentenced to life in prison for beating a Jewish inmate to death, and died a year later.

Legal wrangling over Demjanjuk and his alleged role in the Nazi death machine goes back to the 1970s.

Demjanjuk, who became a U.S. citizen after the war, had his citizenship revoked in 1981 after the U.S. Justice Department alleged that he hid his past as "Ivan the Terrible," a guard at Treblinka.

He was extradited to Israel, where he was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, the conviction was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court after evidence emerged from Soviet archives that "Ivan" was a different Ukrainian named Ivan Marchenko.

Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship was restored but again revoked in 2002, based on fresh Justice Department evidence showing he concealed his service at Sobibor and other Nazi-run death and forced-labor camps from immigration officials.

A U.S. immigration judge ruled in 2005 he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine. The case moved a decisive step forward when Munich prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him in March.

Demjanjuk maintains that he was a Red Army soldier who spent the time as a prisoner of war and never hurt anyone.

But Nazi-era documents obtained by U.S. justice authorities and shared with German prosecutors include a photo ID identifying Demjanjuk as a guard at Sobibor and saying he was trained at an SS facility for Nazi guards at Trawniki, also in Nazi-occupied Poland. U.S. and German experts have declared the ID genuine.

In their March arrest warrant, prosecutors accused Demjanjuk of being an accessory to murder in 29,000 cases, representing the number of people who arrived there while he was alleged to be a camp guard. Some 250,000 people died in the camp's gas chamber from when it opened in 1942 until it was razed to the ground 18 months later.

However, that number was reduced in the charges because, of the people transported to Sobibor, "many did not survive the journey," said Anton Winkler, a spokesman for Munich prosecutors.

Winkler's office is handling the case because Demjanjuk spent time at a refugee camp in the Munich area after the war.

Alongside Demjanjuk's upcoming trial, other cases of alleged Nazi war crimes are working their way through the German legal system.

In Munich, 90-year-old German former army officer Josef Scheungraber is being tried on charges that he ordered the killings of 14 Italian civilians in 1944.

And last week, judges in western Germany ruled that 88-year-old Heinrich Boere, accused of murdering three Dutch civilians during World War II, will go to court after prolonged wrangling over whether he is fit for trial.

"This isn't about revenge. It's not about tormenting an old man — it's about justice, it's about determining guilt," said Dieter Graumann, vice president of Germany's Central Council of Jews.

More important than whether Demjanjuk ultimately is sentenced to prison time is "that the guilt is determined, that it's discussed," Graumann said.

"Now, at a time when there are so many Holocaust deniers ... it's all the more important that in such a trial it's made clear once again what happened, what took place," he said.

[YuSoWrong]

What do you suppose happens when people are cowardly and evil has the last word? Right now Jihadists are at war on six continents against civilian populations whose crime is not being the "correct" sort of Muslim. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Catholics are under attack.

The governments that Jihad wants to impose are theocratic in theory but plain old fascism in practice -- one-party rule, rigged elections, secret police, infallible "courts" -- the same degrading ideas that have been kicking-around the Near East ever since anti-British, anti-French nationalists sought alliance with Nazi Germany.

The CBS News blog is a low-level agit-prop front in that war. There are people here who are obvious scum. If they are what they are, no American should be afraid to call them by the proper name.

[avigil2]

Both of you just need to put a lid on it!

[YuSoWrong]

So long, pal. Guess this street will cool-down for awhile, until the sewers open once again.

[YuSoWrong]

I think that Demjanjuk has the sympathies of every low-level flunky of every dictatorial regime. Someday the war ends, and even the minor agit-prop thugs have to stand trial. Tough times for some up ahead.

[YuSoWrong]

The extent to which certain Jihadists enjoy the WW2 mass-deaths of Jews in Europe is appalling. They are a clear link to the fascist past because of the alliance between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Nazis, and this has colored the one-party dictatorships of the Near East until today. This fascism is also seen in the despicable emails that the stooges of Jihad post regularly on this site.

[YuSoWrong]

My goodness, what a strange and racist and vindictive culture you call home. Tell me when the slave trade ends in East Africa, and who ran and continues to run it today? Hmm? The latest victim of that slave trade being the mind you have pledged to Jihad. As far as your conspiracy theories are concerned, they tell us you should seek comfort from your clergyman, whenever his magic carpet lands.

[YuSoWrong]

Because it isn't the business of good Muslims today or yesterday. Oh, of course. Do they have you posed in front of that poster? Are they wearing masks? Are you free to speak? Because your words don't come from anyone who's a free man.

[YuSoWrong]

We all have a role to play for good or for evil. The choice is clear.

[incog-nito]

If he was a soldier assigned to be guard at the camp, then he was just a soldier and should be released. A lot of people during those times were simply conscripted into the army and told what to do. Did he, while being a guard there, orchestrate the deaths of 27,900 people? The charges seem rather exaggerated.

[nor-one]

Hey, this just gives hope to the parents of the 4000 plus military who have died so far in Iraq. Someday there will be a trail for Bush and Cheney for murder! That would be justice.

[whatsup49]

according to past stories, and a chronology of the demjanjuk case provied through a cbs news search of his name, demjanjuk was captured by german forces while service in the soviet red army. he emigrated to the u.s. in 1952, and gained u.s. citizen ship in n1958. in 1977, the justice department sought to revoike his citizenship, saying demjanjuk his his past as nazie death camp guard "ivan the terrible." his citizenship was revoked in 1981, and in 1986 he was extradicted to israel for trial over his alleged role at treblinka. in 1988, he was sentenced to death after being found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. in 1993, israel's supreme court rules 5-0 that demjanjuk was not ivan the terrible. and in 1998, he regains his u.s. citizenship.

a year later, the u.s. justice department again files a civil complaint against him claiming now that he served as a guard at the sobibor and majdanek camps in occupied poland and of being a member of an ss unit. and we know the rest of the story up to now.

it would seem to me that our federal government has had many, many years to investigate this man and his past, from the time in 1977 when it claimed he was ivan the terrible to now. it also seems that if israel's supreme court overturned his conviction, it found that he was not guilty of the crimes alleged. the israeli government had years prior to this to find additional evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but apparantly found none since it is not the country that is trying him.

if demjanjuk did anything, i'm sure it was done with the threat of his own death if he did not follow orders. yes, the holocaust is one of the most tragic, horrible nightmares committed by racists wanting to purify the world. however, i do not think demjanjuk is the "big fish" that everyone wants him to be. good golly, he has but a few years left, and, if in fact he did commit these horrible crimes, let god punish him.

and before anyone wants to call me anti-semitic, please don't. i'm not, and many of my friends are jewish. i'm not pro-nazi or anti-germany. i'm of russian, polish, german, and irish descent. according to my family records, told by long-dead relatives, my family also lost members to the holocaust. i just believe that there is more to this story than we're hearing about, and that what has been published so far really hasn't convinced me that this old man is guilty of anything.

[YuSoWrong]

Germany goes-after collaborators of the Nazi era. Wonder when collaborators of the Jihad era go on trial.