Munich --
It looks ghastly: In a wheelchair with a blue paper blanket over him, his mouth half open, eyes closed: This is brought John "Ivan" Demjanjuk in the courtroom at the Regional Court of Munich. The 89-year-old must be responsible for aiding and abetting the murder of 27,900 Jews.
In the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland, Demjanjuk is said to have helped in 1943 as a security guard, mostly driven from the Netherlands coming Nazi persecution in the gas chambers. It would be one of the last Nazi war criminal processes worldwide. Demjanjuk was silent.
Main evidence of the accuser is an SS with the service identification number 1393rd "Reassigned on 27.3.43 Sobibor" is handwritten it noted. The card was repeatedly used in visual inspection, the defense continued to doubt the authenticity of the document.
Right at the start of the trial counsel has Ulrich Busch accuses prosecutors and judges from arbitrary: The 89-year-olds stand a command receiver in court, which was pressed under death threats for his work. This is arbitrary, then Bush, and therefore the alleged concentration camp guard was more victim than perpetrator.
In the process 19 plaintiffs appear to have lost their relatives in Sobibor, none of the surviving witnesses, but can remember specifically of Demjanjuk's actions in the murder of Jews. But the indictment concludes that the entire staff at Sobibor always been involved in the destruction, when the prisoners arrived transports.
After the war, Demjanjuk was living among others in a camp in Bavaria Feldafing before in the 50s to Cleveland (U.S. migrated to Ohio). Only when the allegations were compressed against him, depriving him of the U.S. authorities to U.S. citizenship.
