John demjanjuk and nazi death camp

John Demjanjuk a Retired U.S. autoworker was convicted of thousands of counts of acting as an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp. Well this sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison, a groundbreaking verdict that closed one chapter in a decades-long legal battle. this Jewish and Ukrainian-American communities adopted hometown split over his war-crimes conviction, john demjanjuk alternately calling it delayed justice or an unfair legal proceeding.

Demjanjuk was born in Ukraine, and Lana Barkov, editor of a monthly Ukrainian newspaper in Cleveland, said Ukrainian-Americans would see the verdict as Germans trying to push the blame for the Holocaust onto others.Judges ordered him released pending appeal, on the ground that he did not pose a flight risk.Demjanjuk was found guilty of 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder, one for each person who died during the time he was ruled to have been a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.Presiding Judge Ralph Alt said the 91-year-old was a piece of the Nazis' "machinery of destruction."

john demjanjuk

Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN'-yuk) sat in a wheelchair in front of the judges as they announced their verdict, but showed no reaction. He has denied the charges, but declined the opportunity to make a final statement to the court.Andrew Futey, son of Ukrainian immigrants and a leader in an umbrella group of Ukrainian-American organizations, questioned the fairness of the Germany trial. He noted that Israel had tried Demjanjuk in the 1980s on accusations of being a guard at the Treblinka extermination camp and then freed him after a court said the evidence showed he was the victim of mistaken identity.

Defense attorney Guenther Maull said it wasn't yet clear where John Demjanjuk would go once he is freed, but he was likely to live with members of the Ukrainian community in Munich. The court noted that Demjanjuk, who suffers from a variety of ailments, needs daily medical attention.The conviction "sends a powerful message that those responsible for Holocaust crimes can still be held accountable even though decades have passed since they were committed," the center's Israel director, Efraim Zuroff, said in an email.

"Demjanjuk's conviction, moreover, will hopefully facilitate the prosecution of additional Nazi war criminals in Germany and in other countries," Zuroff wrote. "Today's verdict is a long-awaited victory for the victims, their families and people of moral conscience."

There was no evidence that John Demjanjuk committed a specific crime. The prosecution was based on the theory that if John Demjanjuk was at the camp, he was a participant in the killing – the first time such a legal argument has been made in German courts.The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations also has said the card is genuine, but documents unearthed by The Associated Press indicate that the FBI at one time had doubts similar to those aired by Demjanjuk's defense about the evidence – though the material was never turned over to them.

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