The last Nazi war trial

[IndianaGreen]

The last Nazi war trial

Frail 89-year-old Ukrainian accused over deaths of 29,000 Jews arrives in Germany

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

Wednesday, 13 May 2009

Germany's bid to bring the world's most wanted Nazi war crimes suspect to justice began inauspiciously yesterday: a Red Cross ambulance took John Demjanjuk on a stretcher and with tubes protruding from his nose to Munich's Stadelheim prison where he was meant to await trial, but nobody would open the prison door.

Visibly embarrassed, a plain-clothed policeman escorting the 89-year-old Ukrainian retired car worker from Munich airport, rang the bell at the prison's towering steel south gate and waited impatiently for a response from the entry phone. Nothing happened.

Mr Demjanjuk, clad in a black leather jacket and baseball cap, lay in the back of the ambulance and said nothing. After his deportation and subsequent transatlantic flight from his adopted home in Cleveland, Ohio, he stayed motionless with his mouth half open and his hands folded on his lap.

Then, after what seemed like an eternity, the entry phone spluttered into life. Mr Demjanjuk was driven round the block and taken into the prison, where, incidentally, Adolf Hitler was briefly held in 1922, through another entrance. His reception committee, it seems, had chosen the wrong gate.

Thus ended what could be Mr Demjanjuk's last attempt to escape trial for his alleged complicity in the murder of some 29,000 Jewish inmates at the Sobibor Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland during the latter stages of the Second World War.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-last-nazi-war-trial-1684044.html

On edit:

Related Der Spiegel articles on German evidence against Dejamjuk:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3872070#3872380

[azurnoir]

1. To be honest I really do not give a

flying fuk how old, frail, in poor health this man is the only thing I can say is that its good he was captured before he had a chance to die a peaceful death, this applies to any Nazi war criminals who may still be living

[IndianaGreen]

2. BBC quotes Centre for Anti-Semitism Research and Central Consistory of Jews

Wolfgang Benz, head of the Centre for Anti-Semitism Research at Berlin university, said the case was about establishing whether Mr Demjanjuk was guilty, not exacting punishment.

"This is about guilt, about avenging a crime, about responsibility for a criminal act," he told told Deutschlandfunk public radio.

"Whether this old man who possibly is in a pathetic state spends his last years in a prison hospital or does not serve his sentence due to ill health, that's of secondary importance."

That opinion was echoed by Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Consistory of Jews in Germany.

"I am not as naive as to believe that he (Demjanjuk) will spend even one day in prison. But we will get a discussion about justice in post-war Germany and how the justice system has dealt with Nazi crimes," he was quoted as saying.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8045543.stm

[emilyg]

3. Croak swine.

[IndianaGreen]

4. A DUer's mother worked with Dejamjuk on the assembly line.

He was described as "friendly, but quiet." Many of these war criminals are rather ordinary, living unassuming lives. This is how they were able to escape detection for as long as they did.