John Demjanjuk Sentenced To Five Years

May 12 2011           Jump To Discussion

UPDATE MAY 11 2011 – 11:12 AM PST

see original story below

The Munich court that sentenced John Demjanjuk to five years in jail for being involved with killing 27,900 Jews in Sobibor extermination camp during Hitler’s time, has decided to release the former Nazi guard because of his age and health.

The 91 year old, who claims he can’t stand well, can’t travel well the court said and Demjanjuk is allowed to go home a free man.

The trial to convict Demjanjuk of war crimes against humanity lasted 18 months, which Demjanjuk attended in a wheelchair or tied to stretcher, never speaking a single word.  His lawyers demanded that he was set free because nothing pointed at him being at the place and time of the killings.   The defense also argued that even if he was there he was a victim of circumstances.

The court stated that Demjanjuk was a Nazi guard for six months during 1943 and was partially involved with sending 27,900 Jews, mostly Dutch, to their death.

The court found Demjanjuk guilty and sentenced him to five years.  Yet in an unexpected twist, the court later decided not to send him to jail because of his frail health and old age.

Judge Ralph Alt asked Demjanjuk if he had anything to say to the court to which he simply answered ‘Nein’, meaning ‘No’.

Demjanjuk was extradited to Germany by the U.S. two years ago, where he had lived in the Ohio state for 50 years.  All in all the former guard spent 2 years behind bars.  It is unclear at this point if he will spend any additional time in jail.

 

—- ORIGINAL STORY —-

OHIO – The 91 year old retired autoworker has been found guilty of helping with killing more than 27,000 Jews.

A court of Munich condemned John Demjanjuk to five years prison term for his involvement with helping to kill Jews in the Nazi extermination camp in Sobibor.

Ukraine-born Demjanjuk migrated to the U.S. in 1956 and became a U.S. citizen in 1958, working as an engine mechanic in Ohio.

In 1990′s he stood trial in Israel for the mass killings of a separate Holocaust.  In that trial he was initially sentenced to death for being the notorious “Ivan the Terrible” camp guard at the Treblinka camp in Poland.  That decision was later overruled when new evidence was provided that cleared Demjanjuk of that crime.

Demjanjuk, who was once top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center‘s list of most wanted Nazi war criminals, said he was drafted into the Soviet army in 1941 then taken prisoner of war by the Germans.

Demjanjuk attended the 18-month court proceedings in Munich — birthplace of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement — in a wheelchair and sometimes lying down, with his family trying to argue that he was too frail to stand trial.

John Demjanjuk’s son John Demjanjuk Jr. stated that the verdict was unjust because his father was a victim of Nazi and post war Germany.

In an email he said that the ‘Germans are preparing a verdict based upon U.S. government fraud which, if necessary, will not survive German or U.S. judicial review,’ and added that ‘those who refuse to accept that reality may take satisfaction from this event, nothing the Munich court can do will atone for the suffering Germany has perpetrated upon him to this day’.

Demjanjuk is accused of having served as a “Wachmann,” a guard, the lowest rank of the “Hilfswillige” volunteers who were subordinate to German SS men.

The SS identity card that allegedly shows a picture of a young Demjanjuk, and indicates he trained at the SS Trawniki camp and was posted to Sobibor, was integral to the prosecution’s case.   Demjanjuk’s lawyers contested however that the ID card was fake and made by Soviets.

Guards at Nazi death camps like Sobibor were essential to the mass killing of Jews because extermination was the focus of such camps, prosecutors said. Some 250,000 Jews were killed at Sobibor, according to the Wiesenthal Center.

The court’s decision to find Demjanjuk guilty wasn’t quick or easy with no surviving witnesses to interview and having to rely heavily on war documents.   Demjanjuk was eventually found guilty of war-crimes against the Jews and received a sentence of five years imprisonment.

 

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