Accused Nazi guard John Demjanjuk’s lawyer called Tuesday for his trial to be abandoned because of his client’s poor health and because he was cleared by Israel in an earlier case.
“I call for the trial to be stopped,” Ulrich Busch told the court in the German city of Munich on the second day of what is likely to be the last major Holocaust trial.
Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, 89, is charged with assisting in the murder of 27,900 people as a guard from the concentration camp in Westerbork (Holland) to the Sobibor extermination camp in German-occupied Poland in 1943.
Demjanjuk, who changed his name from Ivan after moving to the United States after World War II, was sentenced to death in Israel in 1988 for being “Ivan the Terrible”, a sadistic Nazi guard at another camp, Treblinka.
But after five years on death row the conviction was overturned by Israel because of doubts about his identity, although it was established there that Demjanjuk was a guard at Sobibor and at other camps.
“My client was forcibly deported from the United States even though he has a terminal illness,” Busch said, and that “without a doubt” he was now beingtried for the same crimes for the second time.
Germany’s constitutional court ruled in July that the charges he now faces were not the same as the ones in the earlier trial. Medical experts told the Munich court on Monday that he was well enough to be tried.
Seventeen Dutch nationals act as ‘Nebenkläger,’ co-plaintiffs in the trial, thereby playing an important role in the criminal prosecution of John (Iwan) Demjanjuk, which will probably be the last significant trial of a former Nazi.
At least 170,000 Jews, over 33,000 of whom were from the Netherlands, were murdered in Sobibor in just 18 months.
In prosecuting homicide cases, including those where the charge is being an accessory to those crimes, German criminal law assigns the role of co-plaintiffs to the crime victims’ immediate family (parents, siblings and spouses). Like Public Prosecutors, co-plaintiffs can present witness testimony, deliver closing addresses and determine the severity of the sentence.
In addition to the seventeen co-plaintiffs who attend the trial in Munich, five others are represented as co-plaintiff by German attorneys instead of travelling to Germany.
Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute in Jerusalem said on the opening of the trial: “Unquestionably trials centered on crimes committed during the Holocaust serve as significant forums for raising awareness about the Holocaust. They provide an opportunity to highlight not only events but to explore society-wide and individual responsibility for the atrocities that were committed during that time.”
He added: “There can be no statute of limitations on crimes committed as part of the Holocaust. Although this trial is being discussed as possibly the last Nazi war crimes trial, other trials are taking place, and may take place in the future.”
(Source: EJP / AFP)
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11 Responses
Does anyone know if the Nazis stopped killed Jews who were in poor health?
response to #1
OF COURSE NOT! they single out the people with poor health for extra special handling … i.e. direct to gas chamber. It is said that Zyklon B was used in these chambers which, in addition to killing a person, may be one of the most painful ways to die. This pain was partly due to an additional irritant added to the gas itself so that people around it would know they are in the presence of a very deadly gas. Yet another sadistic method of torturing the poor victims in their final minutes before their death. HORRID!!!
#2, Y.W. Editor was being sarcastic. In any case,he deserves the ultimate punishment whether he’s 89 or 109.
#3 I hope your not talking about Y.W. Editor when you said “he deserves the ultimate punishment whether he’s 89 or 109.”
This “trial” is a joke and should be halted before it results in even more antisemitism. The daily pictures of this drech being wheeled in and out of the court room like a corpse is attacting a lot of attention and sympathy. This kind of media event does nothing for the kadashim of the shoah and should be brought to an end. Its time to move on.
I say they should export some Seattle, WA policemen. They are excellent marksmen. They know how to deal with monsters!
Has anybody ever heard of Teshuva? Arent Jews supposed to be “Rachmonim”?
I’m so sick, avrohom, that you refer to “Teshuva” and “Rachmonim” about a mass murderer who murdered so many of your own nation in cold blood. Has he evidenced any sign of “Teshuva”? Has he asked for Mechila from anyone he has “harmed”, or of their descendants, if they had any who survived?
One who has Rachomonis on a murderous evildoer…Have we lost all morals?
Demjanjuk deserves no rachmones. There is no tshuva for him except in Gehennom. We are not rachmonim toward achzarim; not getting rid of Demjanjuk is the same as Shaul not having rid the world of Agag and therefore leaving him to become the ancestor of Homon (whom I believe to be the direct or indirect ancestor of Ahmadinejad).
Even when Eichmann YMS apologized he was dispatched. This guy should peyger in pain during his trial, which is going on so that he is deprived of peace in his last years. He should never have been allowed to live to 89 in freedom, and this is the best that human justice can do now.
#7 I hope you are joking because if not you are in serious need of a history lesson. There are some people, including multiple time merciless murderers, who can never be forgivven judt because they are older and want to live a peaceful life forgetting about the people they killed. Some deeds can never be fogivven and it is not for any one to be lenient on behalf of the poor 6 million who aren’t here anymore. Misplaced mercy , like mercy on the poor arab terrorists in jail, just resolves in more jews being killed.
#7, you’re kidding. We are not talking about a lynching here merely because someone is Ukranian/German. Can I assume you would have no problem forgiving Jeffrey Dahmer, David Berkowitz, The Boston Strangler, etc.? They are mere amateurs compared to a nazi (ys). This is a matter of justice for those murdered in most heinous ways, by those who took so much joy in doing it.