John Demjanjuk, an 89-year-old retired Ohio autoworker, faced a German court on Monday on charges of being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews while he served at a Nazi death camp.
Demjanjuk arrived in court on Monday in a wheelchair, to what has been a culmination of 30 years of efforts to prosecute him.
However, the question lingering in the back of many individuals’ minds is whether the 89-year-old deserves to still be tried.
A quick Google search of “Demjanjuk” results in 8,310,000 hits, many leading to Web sites fighting for his exoneration. Regardless of Demjanjuk’s age, it is necessary to bring a war criminal to justice. The question some are asking is whether the current case against Demjanjuk is legitimate.
According to CNN, Demjanjuk’s lawyer, Ulrich Busch, asserted Monday the case should never have been heard. He cited cases in which Germans assigned to the same death camp as Demjanjuk as guards were acquitted.
Demjanjuk was known for his 1980s extradition by the United States for trial in Israel on charges that he worked at the Nazi Treblinka death camp, where his level of brutality earned him the moniker “Ivan the Terrible.” He was eventually convicted in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death until Israel’s Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1993. It eventually ruled that another individual was actually “Ivan the Terrible.”
However, Demjanjuk, who was actually a former Soviet Red Army soldier, volunteered to serve as a guard under the Schutzstaffel (S.S.) after he was taken prisoner by Nazi forces in 1942. According to CNN, he supposedly served as a “wachmann,” or guard, under the S.S. If he were convicted, Demjanjuk would be the lowest-ranking person to go on trial for Nazi war crimes. Not too surprisingly, Demjanjuk and his lawyer question the integrity of the evidence against him, including an S.S. identity card that prosecutors said features a photo of Demjanjuk and states that he worked at a death camp.
However, prosecutors maintain the most damning evidence they have are statements made by Ignat Danilchenko, a now-deceased Ukrainian Soviet officer who was exiled to Siberia for helping the Nazis. According to ABC News, Danilchenko told the Soviet KGB in 1979 he served with Demjanjuk. However, Demjanjuk’s defense maintains there are inconsistencies in the Danilchenko statements.
The case currently being presented by the prosecution certainly needs to be fleshed out, considering the fact that the only witness against Demjanjuk is deceased. Moreover, the fact that Danilchenko’s supposed testimony against Demjanjuk is from a KGB report brings into question the reputability of the testimony in the defense’s eyes. According to Bloomberg.com, Polish authorities had previously concluded that there was not enough evidence for them to prosecute Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk’s lawyer believes the finding under European Union law is equivalent to double-jeopardy rules in the U.S.
The case will at least resolve the years of investigation with this case, considering the case against him this time, Demjanjuk, deserves a fair hearing.
Reach Joseph at jhermiz@asu.edu
