Munich – Dutch Jews told the German trial of alleged Nazi guard John Demjanjuk, 89, on Monday how their relatives were rounded up by the Nazis during the Second World War and taken away to be killed. Demjanjuk appeared in court sitting in a wheelchair and kept his eyes shut during most of the hearing, as he did on the first two days of the trial three weeks ago. The trial was resuming after a long adjournment was ordered for him to recover from a slight infection.
The survivors have joined their names as private prosecutors to the Munich indictment, which accuses Demjanjuk of being one of the guards who herded 27,900 Jews into gas chambers at Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland.
“Sobibor is a painful wound that can never heal for me,” said an 86-year-old retired Amsterdam pharmacist.
His eyes filling with tears, he said his parents, his sister and his girlfriend were all killed. He had managed to escape the Nazis by making his way to Britain via Belgium, France, Spain and Canada, but felt guilty that he had left behind those he loved.
“Those events have dominated every day of my life since,” he said, describing how he did not learn of his relatives’ fate at Sobibor till a few months after the Second World War ended in 1945.
Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk is alleged to have worked at the camp for several months in 1943 after the Nazis offered to free him from a camp for Soviet prisoners of war if he would work as a uniformed guard for the SS, the Nazi Party’s own army.
He was expelled in May from his US home to Germany to face the Holocaust charges.
A 70-year-old man told the court, “I am prosecuting on behalf of my parents.” He said he had been a little boy when his parents were taken away from him to be killed at Sobibor in 1943.
“My mother was in advanced pregnancy at the time,” he said. “So I am also prosecuting on behalf of my unborn brother or sister.” He said another family took him in so that he survived the Holocaust.
Another Dutch co-prosecutor, 67, said he had been just a baby, 1, when his father was taken away to Sobibor and had not known till he was 6 or 7 that his father had been murdered.
“I asked my mother why I didn’t have any father to play football with like other boys did,” he said. That was when he was told the terrible truth. He later learned that 74 of his relatives had been murdered by the Nazis in various German concentration camps.
Demjanjuk is accused of being an accessory to murder and could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
(Source: Earth Times / DPA)
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6 Responses
Why would he be moved? He’s not human! He’s an animal!
Why would he be moved? He’s not human! He’s an animal!
So he’s already been convicted in your mind? You know he’s guilty…. how?
BS”D
Just the recent confirmation of what this vilde chaya did when he served in the motor corps is enough to show what he is.
He should be immersed live in sulfuric acid.
No, that is too good for him and a waste of good acid.
The only animal that his remains should be fed to is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad YMS.
Move how could a nazi have feelings if he did he could not be a nazi. Make him suffer every last minute of his wasted life. When they bury this garbage may the earth spit him out
Blue Pinky, what are you, a card carrying member of the Aryan Nation?
For your information, there has been an enormous documented testimony already about “Ivan the Terrible” from eyewitnesses.
Maybe you are one of those Arabs from C.A.I.R. who want the whole world to believe that the Holocaust is nothing more than a money shakedown scheme of the Jews.
I would love nothing more than tie you to a tree a trot in front of you all of the Holocaust survivors I know and I know a lot of them. Then I would let you stay there and rot.
Flatbush Bubby, don’t be silly, Ivan the Terrible (whoever he was) was at Treblinka, not Sobibor!
This court’s assumption (that Demjanjuk was at Sobibor) is inherently at odds with maintaining that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible (the operator of the Treblinka “Gas Chambers”). This makes sense, because the link between Demjanjuk and ItT has long been thrown out of court.
Clearly you are foaming at the mouth and joining the cheerleaders without taking the requisite time to get your facts straight.
And no, one needn’t be a member of the Aryan Nation or CAIR to be very cynical about the American, Israeli, and European Justice systems who just happen never to have our best interests at heart in any other case!