Nazi trial
December 1, 2009
The second day of the trial of Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk is set to begin in Munich with a formal reading of the war crimes charges he faces. On Monday the 89-year-old man was wheeled into the courtroom in a wheelchair, moaning.
His family claims he suffers from illnesses that make him unfit for trial. But courts in Germany and in the US where Demjanjuk lived for decades after World War II, dismissed such claims. The US allowed him to be extradited in May.
Demjanjuk is accused of aiding in the murder of 28,000 victims at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. He was a Soviet Red Army soldier captured by the Nazis in 1942. Bavarian state prosecutors say he was trained and then transferred to Sobibor to work as a guard.
They say he became one of the most enthusiastic participants in that camp's policy of mass murder.
"We hold that the whole set of crimes was only possible because people like the accused today actively supported and carried them out," said Barbara Stockinger on Monday, speaking on behalf of the Bavarian state attorney's office.
But Demjanjuk's lawyers argued that he himself was a victim, a prisoner of his Nazi captors.
"He was a survivor of the holocaust, not a perpetrator," said his defense lawyer Ulrich Busch on Monday.
hf/mrh/AFP/dpa/Reuters
Editor: Chuck Penfold