Ex-Nazi guard faces 29,000 charges over slaughter in death camp

Published on Wednesday 11 March 2009 20:50

GERMAN prosecutors yesterday charged retired Ohio car worker John Demjanjuk with more than 29,000 counts of accessory to murder for his time as a guard at the Nazi death camp Sobibor.

Demjanjuk now faces extradition from the United States after being accused of participating in the murders while he was a guard at the Nazi camp in occupied Poland between March and September 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.

The 88-year-old Demjanjuk, who lives in a Cleveland suburb, denies involvement.

Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk jnr said his father is suffering from a blood disorder and acute kidney failure, and is not fit for international travel.

"Whatever the Germans decide to do, we will continue to fight for justice in this sad case as there has never been any credible evidence of his personal involvement in even one murder, let alone thousands," Demjanjuk jnr said. "He has never hurt anyone – before, during or after the war. He is a good person as his family, grandchildren, friends and neighbours have always maintained."

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at Israel's Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said he was "very pleased that the German authorities have taken this step."

"We hope that the process can be expedited to ensure that this Holocaust perpetrator will finally be appropriately punished," Zuroff said. "We're on our way to a victory for justice today."

A native of Ukraine, Demjanjuk emigrated to the US 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 was extradited to Israel in 1986, when the US Justice Department believed he was the sadistic Nazi guard known as Ivan the Terrible from the Treblinka death camp.

He spent seven years in custody before the Israeli high court freed him after receiving evidence that another Ukrainian was that Nazi guard.

Demjanjuk's US citizenship was restored in 1998, but the US 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.

In December 2005, a US court 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 US Supreme Court chose not to consider Demjanjuk's appeal against deportation, clearing the way for his removal from the United States.

But it was unclear which country would take him – his native Ukraine, Poland or Germany.

Now, 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.