SALON

Thursday, May 12, 2011 5:09 PM UTC

After decades, Demjanjuk found guilty in Germany

The retired Cleveland autoworker convicted on over 28,000 counts of being an accessory to murder at Sobibor

By

Topics: World War II, Germany,

After decades, Demjanjuk found guilty in GermanyJohn Demjanjuk arrives at the court building in Munich, southern Germany, on Wednesday, May 11, 2011. Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, 91, is accused of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder for allegedly serving as a guard in the Nazis' Sobibor death camp. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)(Credit: AP)

For more than thirty years, John Demjanjuk — the retired Ohio autoworker sentenced to death for crimes against humanity in the 1980s — has fought nagging Nazi war crime allegations.

Today, a German court declared Demjanjuk (91) guilty on 28,060 counts of acting as an accessory to murder at the Sobibor extermination camp, and sentenced him to five years in prison. For a man who has been fighting similar accusations for decades — facing, at various points, punishments that ranged from solitary confinement to hanging — a five-year sentence might not seem very long.

The AP explains the verdict:

Demjanjuk was charged with 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder, one for each person who died during the time he was accused of being a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. There was no evidence he committed a specific crime. The prosecution was based on the theory that if 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.

Born in the Ukraine, Demjanjuk moved to the U.S. after World War II and became an American citizen; his U.S. citizenship has been twice revoked since. In the 1980s, he was tried in Israel on war crimes charges and found guilty of being “Ivan the Terrible” of Treblinka; the conviction was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court when evidence linking the infamous extermination camp guard to a different name emerged.

The details of Demjanjuk’s case since the late 1970s, when the account of his past that he had provided on his citizenship application was first questioned, are intricate; this BBC profile offers a useful chronological primer.

Over the years since Demjanjuk’s case first reached international prominence, it has — not surprisingly — attracted attention from political and cultural commentators alike. Pat Buchanan once crusaded for the man he called an “American Dreyfus,” explaining in 2008 that he believed the Germans only wanted to bring Demjanjuk to trial so that he might “serve as the sacrificial lamb whose blood washes away the stain of Germany’s sins;” Demjanjuk’s Israeli trial also served as the setting for psychological intrigue in Philip Roth’s 1993 novel “Operation Shylock: A Confession.”

Emma Mustich is a Salon contributor. Follow her on Twitter: @emustich. More Emma Mustich.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 22 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations