Retired auto worker John Demjanjuk was formally charged on Monday with 27,900 counts of acting as an accessory to murder — one for every person who died at Sobibor during the time he is accused of serving as a guard at the Nazi death camp.
The charges by prosecutors at a Munich state court are one of the final steps before an expected autumn trial for the 89-year-old, who has been fighting a variety of Nazi-era charges since 1977.
HEALTH
PHOTO: AP
Demjanjuk and his family have argued that he is in poor health.
Photos taken in April showed him wincing in pain as immigration agents removed him from his home in Seven Hills, Ohio, where he had been living since 1993.
German doctors cleared the way for formal charges this month when they declared that Demjanjuk was fit to stand trial so long as court hearings did not exceed two 90-minute sessions per day.
The state court must now decide whether to accept the charges — usually a formality — and set a date for the trial.
Court spokeswoman Margarete Noetzel it was unlikely to start until the autumn.
‘A FARCE’
The defendant’s son, John Demjanjuk Jr, described the charges as “a farce” in an e-mail to The Associated Press, writing that: “as long as my father remains alive, we will defend his innocence as he has never hurt anyone anywhere.”
Demjanjuk’s lawyer, Guenther Maull, said he had no immediate comment because had not yet seen the charges.
Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, says he was a Red Army soldier who spent the war as a prisoner of war and never hurt anyone.
But prosecutors accuse him of serving as a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.
PHOTO ID
Nazi-era documents obtained by German prosecutors include a photo ID identifying Demjanjuk as a guard at Sobibor and saying he was trained at an SS facility for Nazi guards at Trawniki, Poland.
US and German experts have declared the ID genuine.
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