Former Nazi death camp guard taken to German jail

Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 12:14 AM Posted by Beijing News


Germany took John Demjanjuk into custody Tuesday after his deportation from the US and prepared to try him on charges he assisted in the killing of 29,000 Jews in a Nazi death camp.

After losing a marathon legal battle to stay in the United States, the 89-year-old landed in a specially-chartered plane at an isolated area of Munich airport where he was met by officials from the state prosecutor's office.

Demjanjuk was then transferred to nearby Stadelheim prison -- the same prison where Adolf Hitler served time in 1922 for disturbing the peace.

Photos showed the retired autoworker -- who his family says is in ill health -- lying in an ambulance en route to the prison with tubes in his nostrils, dressed in a leather jacket and a baseball cap.

If he is deemed fit, he will have the 21-page charge sheet read to him on Tuesday and if no new evidence surfaces, he will be formally charged "within weeks," the prosecution said.

US officials who spent decades trying to bring the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk to justice hailed his deportation to face trial in Germany as "historic".

"Now, finally, Mr. Demjanjuk has been held accountable in one small way for his part in one of the most horrific chapters in history," assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said.

Doctors accompanying him on the overnight flight from Cleveland said he slept for most of the journey.

Germany issued a warrant for Demjanjuk's arrest in March on charges of helping to murder 29,000 Jews during his time as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.

Witnesses say he walked children, women and men to the gas chambers.

However, Demjanjuk's lawyer, Ulrich Busch, said his client denied that he was in Sobibor.

"But even if he had been there, he should still be acquitted. He comes from Ukraine and would have been a so-called foreign guard" forced into service by the Nazis, Busch added.

Courts in both Israel and the United States have previously stated he was a guard at Sobibor, accusations he had never previously challenged.

Demjanjuk is right at the top of Nazi hunters' most-wanted list, and was sentenced to death by an Israeli court two decades ago, suspected of being the feared guard nicknamed "Ivan the Terrible" who would hack at naked prisoners with a sword.

That verdict was overturned in 1993 when statements from former guards identified another man as "Ivan the Terrible".

German television reported that a survivor of the Sobibor camp could help confirm Demjanjuk's identity.

This witness, 82-year-old Thomas Blatt, has described the conditions at Sobibor akin to a death factory.

Demjanjuk was suspect number three in the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's latest report on Nazi war criminals behind two others thought to be dead.





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