German Prosecutors Charge Alleged Former Nazi Death Camp Guard with 29,000 Counts of Accessory to Murder
On Wednesday German prosecutors said that they have charged John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker living in a Cleveland, Ohio suburb, with more than 29,000 counts of accessory to murder for his stint as a guard at the Nazi Sobibor death camp. Prosecutors also revealed that they will seek his extradition from the U.S.
Demjanjuk, 88, stands accused of participating in the murders while he was a guard at Sobibor in occupied Poland between March and September 1943. Demjanjuk denies any involvement.
Munich prosecutors said in a statement: "In this capacity, he participated in the accessory to murder of at least 29,000 people of the Jewish faith."
Efraim Zuroff, a top Nazi hunter at Israel's Simon Wiesenthal Center, indicated that he was pleased with the actions of the German authorities. "We hope that the process can be expedited to ensure that this Holocaust perpetrator will finally be appropriately punished. We're on our way to a victory for justice today," he continued.
Demjanjuk was a native of Ukraine and emigrated to the U.S. in 1952. He gained citizenship in 1958. Denying any war crimes, he said he served in the Soviety army and was a prisoner of war when captured by Germans in 1942.
He was previously extradicted to Israel in 1986, when he was mistakenly believed to be the Nazi guard known as Ivan the Terrible from the Treblinka death camp. He was held in custody for seven years before the Israeli courts freed him after learning that another Ukranian was that infamous Nazi guard.
His citizenship was restored in 1998. However, the US Justice Dept. renewed its case, claiming he was another Nazi guard. They also said that he could be deported for falsifying information upon entry and citizenship applications that he filed in the 1950s.
In 2005 a US court ruling said that he could be deported to Ukraine, or to Germany or Poland. However Demjanjuk spend several years challenging the ruling. In 2008, the Supreme Court decided not to consider his appeal against deportation. This cleared the way for the Office of Special Investigations to seek his removal from the country. It was unclear at the time which country would take him.
Germany is handling the case because of the time he spent at a refugee camp in the area of Munich after the war, and said that they are working on the extradition request. Once extradicted to Germany, Munich prosecutors said that Demjanjuk will be formally charged before a judge.
Comments
John Demjanjuk is to be tried for war crimes while hundreds of IDF terrorists who are guilty of war crimes in Gaza will never be tried. Charles Freeman withdrew his nomination because of the iron heel pressure coming for AIPAC and other Jewish groups. Who does run the government of the U.S.A.?
I realize the Holocaust was beyond horrendous - it was the worst thing I could ever imagine one group of human beings doing to another - but at the same time prosecuting an 88 year old man for doing what he was ordered by his government leader to do 35 years ago seems a little overboard.
What good is going to come out of sending this man to jail? It isn't going to change what happened or whatever part he may have had in it. Maybe it will make someone feel better but I just think we (as a world) should focus on the horrors going on in the world right now. There are terrorist wars going on all over and I would think our time could be better spent saving people's live now instead of hunting down dying old men from the past.