The trial of accused Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk began in Berlin.
Demjanjuk, 89, a former autoworker who lived in suburban Cleveland, appeared Monday morning before the court in a wheelchair, covered by a blanket. The proceedings began an hour after the scheduled start time in order to accommodate the 200 accredited journalists.
Due to Demjanjuk’s poor health, the hearings will be restricted to two 90-minute sessions per day.
“Justice will be served,”
Israeli President Shimon Peres said Monday morning, commenting on the Demjanjuk trial. “True, he is not a young or healthy anymore, but justice always remains young.”
“There can be no statute of limitations on crimes committed as part of the Holocaust,” said Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. “Although this trial is being discussed as possibly the last Nazi war crimes trial, other trials are taking place, and may take place in the future.”
Shalev added that “Survivors are interested, even at this late stage, in a modicum of justice. While no trial can bring back those that were murdered, holding those responsible to justice has an important moral and educational role in society.”
Demjanjuk is charged with being an accessory in the murder of 27,900 people in the Nazi death camp Sobibor. If convicted, he could face a prison sentence of up to 15 years.
The trial is expected to end in May. Demjanjuk has denied the charges and said he was a Soviet prisoner of war in a German camp.
In 2002, the U.S. Justice Department charged Demjanjuk with being a guard at Sobibor and revoked his citizenship for lying about his Nazi past in order to gain citizenship. He was extradited to Germany in May.
In the early 1980s, Demjanjuk was accused of being the notorious guard “Ivan the Terrible” at the Treblinka death camp. He was deported to Israel in 1986 and sentenced to death in 1988, but the Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1993 after finding reasonable doubt that he was the guard in question.
New evidence allowed the current charges to be brought.
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