Demjanjuk Convicted of as an Accessory to 28,060 Murders at Sobibor

[PanzerJaeger]

Demjanjuk convicted over Nazi camp deaths (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110512/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_demjanjuk)


MUNICH – A German court convicted retired U.S. autoworker John Demjanjuk on Thursday of taking part in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews as a Nazi death camp guard, breaking legal ground that could pave the way for the prosecution of many low-level cogs in Hitler's machinery of destruction.

The 91-year-old Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years in prison on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder — one each for the number of people killed at the Sobibor death camp during the six months in 1943 when he was convicted of standing guard there.

But Demjanjuk will spend no immediate time behind bars. Presiding Judge Ralph Alt ordered him released from custody pending his appeal — a process that could take at least a year. It was not immediately clear when Demjanjuk would be released or where he would go.

The case was considered groundbreaking because although scores of Nazi war criminals have been tried and convicted in Germany, in this case there was no evidence that Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN'-yuk) committed a specific crime.

His prosecution was based on the theory that if Demjanjuk was at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, he was a participant in the killing there — the first time such a legal argument has been made in German courts.

"This case is a door opener," said Thomas Walther, a former federal prosecutor who led the investigation that prompted Germany to put Demjanjuk on trial.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was a Soviet Red Army soldier captured by the Germans in Crimea in 1942. He is accused of then agreeing to serve as a "Wachmann," or guard, the lowest rank of the "Hilfswillige," former POWs who were subordinate to German SS men.

Walther said his office has many cases that have been investigated but shelved and could now be reopened. Although it's hard to say how many living suspects might fall into the same category as Demjanjuk, it could be hundreds or more, Walther said.

"It could be very soon that more are brought to the table," he told The Associated Press.

The prospect of Demjanjuk's release pending appeal, though common under the German justice system, drew immediate ire from those who had been pushing for his conviction.

"We don't think that that's appropriate given the heinous nature of his crimes," Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

Still, Zuroff called the conviction "a very important victory for justice."

"The verdict sends a very powerful message that even many years after the crimes of the Holocaust, the perpetrators can be brought to justice," he said. "We're hopeful that this verdict will pave the way for additional prosecutions in Germany."

Demjanjuk attorney Ulrich Busch said he was appealing the decision and expressed confidence he would succeed. Demjanjuk "will not see one day in jail," he said.

Alt said Demjanjuk did not pose a flight risk because of his age, poor health and the fact that he is stateless after being deported from the U.S. two years ago.

That meant there were no grounds to hold him, Alt said. "It's the law, and so it's justice," he told the AP. "I say he's guilty, but it's not a final verdict."

Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said his father needs daily medical attention and would likely need to be moved into an assisted care facility — the costs of which would be paid by the German government.

"We're in the planning stage and I can't say where he's going to go," he told the AP in a telephone interview from Ohio.

Still, he said he was relieved by the decision to free his father "because he has never deserved to sit in prison for one minute."

The younger Demjanjuk said he planned to visit his father, though he was not sure when. Demjanjuk's 85-year-old wife, Vera, is in poor health and unable to travel.

In handing down the court's ruling, Alt called Demjanjuk a piece of the Nazis' "machinery of destruction."

"The court is convinced that the defendant ... served as a guard at Sobibor from 27 March 1943 to mid-September 1943," Alt said, referring to a period when the Nazi genocide machine was operating at full force.

Demjanjuk sat in a wheelchair in front of the judges as they announced their verdict after the nearly 18-month trial, but showed no reaction. He has denied the charges but declined the opportunity to make a final statement to the court.

Integral to the prosecution's case was an SS identity card that allegedly shows a picture of a young Demjanjuk and indicates he trained at the SS Trawniki camp and was posted to Sobibor.

Though court experts said the card appears genuine, the defense maintains it is a fake produced by the Soviet KGB.

The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations also has said the card is genuine, but documents recently unearthed by the AP indicate the FBI at one time had doubts similar to those aired by Demjanjuk's defense — though the material was never turned over to his attorneys.

Alt noted that in addition to the card the court found other credible evidence, including transfer lists indicating a guard named Demjanjuk with the same Trawniki number was sent to serve in Sobibor and elsewhere.

Rudolf Salomon Cortissos, whose mother was gassed at Sobibor along with thousands of other Dutch Jews, cried softly in a back row of the courtroom, wiping his tears with a white handkerchief, as Alt somberly read out the names of his mother and others who were killed in the death camp.

"It's very emotional. It doesn't happen every day," he said, adding that he was happy with the verdict and sentence. "For me it is satisfying."

Vera John de Jong of Belgium, whose parents were gassed in Sobibor, was stoic about the decision to release Demjanjuk for the time being.

"He's been convicted, and that's what is important," she told AP. "He was probably better off in prison than he will be now because he was very well looked after there."

Demjanjuk has been stripped of his U.S. citizenship and has been in custody in Germany since his deportation.

Three Sobibor survivors and about three dozen other people who lost family members at the death camp joined the trial as co-plaintiffs as allowed under German law.

Cornelius Nestler, a lawyer for the co-plaintiffs, said Demjanjuk likely would serve three years at most, given the time he has already spent in German custody.

But he said he, too, was satisfied with the sentence, which came close to prosecutors' call for a six-year term. That call took into account Demjanjuk's age and the time he had already served in Israel in the 1980s.

Charges of accessory to murder carry a maximum term of 15 years in Germany, which does not allow consecutive sentences for multiple counts of the same crime.

The verdict won't entirely end more than 30 years of legal wrangling. Along with the German appeal, proceedings continue in the United States.

In the 1980s, Demjanjuk stood trial in Israel after he was accused of being the notoriously brutal guard "Ivan the Terrible" at the Treblinka extermination camp. He was convicted, sentenced to death and then freed when an Israeli court overturned the ruling, saying the evidence showed he was the victim of mistaken identity.

Demjanjuk has always maintained he was a victim of the Nazis — first wounded as a Soviet soldier and then captured and held as a prisoner of war under brutal conditions before joining the Vlasov Army, a force of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others that was formed to fight with the Germans against the Soviets in the final months of the war.

Prosecutors said that after his capture, the evidence shows Demjanjuk agreed to serve the German SS and was posted to Sobibor.

Now in the U.S., new litigation is under way following the AP report that brought to light the 1985 FBI report questioning the legitimacy of the Trawniki identity card used in the current prosecution. That revelation has led to new court action, with a federal judge in Cleveland agreeing this week to appoint a public defender to represent Demjanjuk there.


Well, the Nazi hunters have bagged another one, this one a Russian POW pressed into German service for fear of his life and accused of... well... nothing in particular. Indeed, the sad case of John Demjanjuk, if the word "case" even applies considering there was a distinct lack of anything resembling one (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1385940/John-Demjanjuk-trial-30-pensioners-worked-Nazi-death-camp-guards.html), demonstrates how entrenched, corrupt, and desperate the Nazi hunting industry has become as its sole raison d'être slowly dies out.

Hounded for years at a cost of millions by the criminal Office of Special Investigations (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/18/us/excerpts-from-appeals-panel-ruling-in-demjanjuk-s-case-against-the-us.html), tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang as Ivan the Terrible, only to be saved by the truth (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/04/world/demjanjuk-return-is-backed-in-ruling-by-appeals-court.html?src=pm), and now convicted in a case based entirely on fabricated evidence (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110412/ap_on_re_eu/eu_demjanjuk_fbi_doubts), it seems the 91 year old will never escape the vengeful grip of Simon Wiesenthal's surviving minions.

Demjanjuk's case should be a wake up call to end the witch hunts. The man has been a victim his entire life - first of the Soviets, then the Nazis, and now the shadowy jackals in the funding-hungry Nazi hunting industry (http://www.haaretz.com/news/irish-museum-formally-cleared-of-allegations-it-had-nazi-ties-1.230158).

[Centurion1]

Demjanjuk convicted over Nazi camp deaths (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110512/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_demjanjuk)




Well, the Nazi hunters have bagged another one, this one a Russian POW pressed into German service for fear of his life and accused of... well... nothing in particular. Indeed, the sad case of John Demjanjuk, if the word "case" even applies considering there was a distinct lack of anything resembling one, demonstrates how entrenched, corrupt, and desperate the Nazi hunting industry has become as its sole raison d'être slowly dies out.

Hounded for years at a cost of millions by the criminal Office of Special Investigations (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/18/us/excerpts-from-appeals-panel-ruling-in-demjanjuk-s-case-against-the-us.html), tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang as Ivan the Terrible, only to be saved by the truth (http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/04/world/demjanjuk-return-is-backed-in-ruling-by-appeals-court.html?src=pm), and now convicted in a case based entirely on fabricated evidence (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110412/ap_on_re_eu/eu_demjanjuk_fbi_doubts), it seems the 91 year old will never escape the vengeful grip of Simon Wiesenthal's surviving minions.

Demjanjuk's case should be a wake up call to end the witch hunts. The man has been a victim his entire life - first of the Soviets, then the Nazis, and now the shadowy jackals in the funding-hungry Nazi hunting industry (http://www.haaretz.com/news/irish-museum-formally-cleared-of-allegations-it-had-nazi-ties-1.230158).

He did what he did and no one can really force you to BE a death camp guard. Die he will and I don't care. Why do you seem to be a Nazi apologist sometimes? I thought you weren't it was just a respect for the german military machine but you always seem to try to either diminish their atrocities by demonstrating the allies flaws or simply extolling their virtues. Am i missing something here? Please tell me I misunderstand you.

[Fragony]

He did what he did and no one can really force you to BE a death camp guard. Die he will and I don't care. Why do you seem to be a Nazi apologist sometimes? I thought you weren't it was just a respect for the german military machine but you always seem to try to either diminish their atrocities by demonstrating the allies flaws or simply extolling their virtues. Am i missing something here? Please tell me I misunderstand you.

Do mind that even in Israel he was released because of lack of evidence, there have been a lot of idendity mixups in the past because the Russians also have a thing or two to answer for. And things should be put to rest anyway imho. Let it die with the last survivors good or bad.

[Centurion1]

reading over it more fully (its late here) I see that it is a very flimsy case at best.

[PanzerJaeger]

reading over it more fully (its late here) I see that it is a very flimsy case at best.

So flimsy, in fact, that Demjanjuk may have a shot at regaining his US citizenship (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1385940/John-Demjanjuk-trial-30-pensioners-worked-Nazi-death-camp-guards.html), if he lives long enough. It is inconceivable that anyone but a non-Nazi Simon Wiesenthal Center branded Nazi could be convicted after the years of legal misconduct Demjanjuk has been subjected to in the US, Israel, and now Germany.


Demjanjuk's defence received a further boost yesterday when a public defender was appointed to represent Demjanjuk's U.S. legal interests, raising the prospect of renewing the decades-old case in American courts.

U.S. District Court Judge Dan Polster issued a brief order approving the federal public defender's request to represent John Demjanjuk, 90.

The judge said the appointment won't affect Demjanjuk's German trial, where a verdict could come as early as Thursday on more than 28,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he served as a death camp guard. He has pleaded not guilty.

Demjanjuk doesn't have any current legal proceedings under way in the U.S.

However, the judge indicated Demjanjuk could revive his U.S. denaturalization case based on the recently uncovered 1985 FBI report which challenged authenticity of a Nazi ID card used as evidence in the German trial.

'It is the responsibility of the court to insure the integrity of court proceedings,' the judge's order said.

'There has already been one confirmed instance of fraud against the court in the first denaturalization trial.'

In a 1993 review of the American denaturalization hearing that led to Demjanjuk's extradition to Israel, an appeals panel found that the U.S. Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit engaged in 'prosecutorial misconduct that seriously misled the court' by withholding evidence that might have helped Demjanjuk.

Polster cited federal rules allowing cases to be reopened based on various reasons, including new evidence.

He said his order appointing the public defender's office to represent Demjanjuk wasn't a finding or even speculation about the authenticity of the Nazi ID card.

Polster said: 'Should Demjanjuk be found guilty of a criminal offence in Germany, he will need to serve whatever sentence the court in Germany imposes.'

Federal prosecutors had opposed the appointment of a public defender, saying there were no current legal proceedings in the U.S. involving Demjanjuk, he hadn't asked for a public defender and he has an attorney who has agreed to defend him for free.

It was reported in April that the 1985 file indicated the FBI believed a Nazi ID card purportedly showing that Demjanjuk served as a death camp guard was a Soviet-made fake.

His defence attorneys have repeatedly claimed that the card and other evidence against him are Soviet forgeries. The FBI report provides the first known confirmation that American investigators had similar doubts.

In three decades of U.S. hearings, an extradition, a death sentence followed by acquittal in Israel, a deportation and the German trial, the arguments have relied heavily on the photo ID from an SS training camp that indicates Demjanjuk was sent to the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland.

The German court rejected a defence request to suspend the trial so that defence attorneys could travel to the U.S. to examine the new material.

Polster said Demjanjuk's German attorneys are aware of the 1985 document.

[CountArach]

Well, the Nazi hunters have bagged another one, this one a Russian POW pressed into German service for fear of his life and accused of... well... nothing in particular.
I'm not sure what to think about this case but I feel that this is a misrepresentation of the article. Pressed into service seems to be something of an overstatement:

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was a Soviet Red Army soldier captured by the Germans in Crimea in 1942. He is accused of then agreeing to serve as a "Wachmann," or guard, the lowest rank of the "Hilfswillige," former POWs who were subordinate to German SS men.
[...]
Demjanjuk has always maintained he was a victim of the Nazis — first wounded as a Soviet soldier and then captured and held as a prisoner of war under brutal conditions before joining the Vlasov Army, a force of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others that was formed to fight with the Germans against the Soviets in the final months of the war.

Prosecutors said that after his capture, the evidence shows Demjanjuk agreed to serve the German SS and was posted to Sobibor.
So "pressed into service" seems to misrepresent the fact that he was clearly sympathetic to the Nazis.

[Fragony]

So "pressed into service" seems to misrepresent the fact that he was clearly sympathetic to the Nazis.

Or very unsympathetic to the communists, happened all the time

[PanzerJaeger]

So "pressed into service" seems to misrepresent the fact that he was clearly sympathetic to the Nazis.

That is not even remotely accurate. I suggest you familiarize yourself with the plight of Russian prisoners of war during WW2 (http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/04/john_demjanjuk_for_some_of_the.html). Working with the Nazis was often their only chance at survival. The fact that he served under them says nothing about his sympathies. In fact, the Vlasov Army turned against the Germans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Army#Fight_against_the_Germans_and_capture_by_the_Soviets) as soon as they could.


I do not know if Ivan Demjanjuk from Cleveland was a guard in a concentration camp. He denies such involvement. But if he was, who among us would have behaved differently if confronted with imminent death by starvation? Might any of us have chosen to extend our lives for a few more months or weeks? We do not blame Jewish policemen in the Jewish ghettos who herded their own people to the trains taking them to the concentration camps of Auschwitz or Treblinka.

...

I cannot resist the thought that this affair with Ivan Demjanjuk has nothing to do with justice, his guilt or even his identity. It is a propaganda tool that serves a particular group of Justice Department officials desperately trying to prove that their office is still needed. They have a "pressing problem"! Such people as Demjanjuk are just dying off.

[Strike For The South]

Petty, Chilidish, and irrelavant

But this is what happens when you lose the game

Death camps were a bad choice

Although granted their is something to be said for the fact that the law will be enfoced. So kudos I suppose

[PanzerJaeger]

This case is important because it breathes new life into the long corrupted Nazi-hunter industry, and highlights where it will next focus its attention.

The men who actually conceived of, planned, and executed the Holocaust – mostly in their ‘30s and older at the time – have long since perished. The only possible candidates left to hold up to scare Jewish grandmothers into writing fat checks to the various institutes and centers that provide comfortable livings for the crooks that operate them are the lowly foot soldiers – just boys at the time.

Demjanjuk was a firewall of sorts – a test to see just how lowly a soldier and just how flimsy a case they could push through (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,591257,00.html) the justice system.


Desire to Look Good in the Press

Now the German prosecutors are coming under growing international pressure. "We are pleased about the new developments in the Demjanjuk saga," says Jeffrey Sinensky of the American Jewish Committee.

Serge Klarsfeld, a Paris Nazi hunter whose organization has collected extensive evidence against Demjanjuk, also welcomes the initiative, but hopes that a potential trial does not end in another acquittal. "That would be the worst thing, because an acquittal would make it seem as if the crimes for which he was being tried never happened."

Even if Munich does declare that the Demjanjuk case falls within its jurisdiction, political actors will soon have their say. A request to take Demjanjuk into custody would first have to be submitted to the Bavarian justice ministry, which would then forward it to Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ). The BMJ decides in such cases whether to forward the request to the United States. In cases of special political relevance, the Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of the Interior would also be consulted.

Whether this legal drama will ever come to a close remains questionable. The biggest problem will likely be the suspect's ability to stand trial. In a letter to a news agency, John Demjanjuk Jr. wrote that his father won't be capable of defending himself in further foreign trials. Demjanjuk and his family have consistently denied the crimes. The case hasn't been about justice for a long time, says Demjanjuk's son, who believes that the German investigators are merely motivated by a desire to look good in the press.


If a Soviet POW can be convicted without any evidence of an actual crime and after all the legal misconduct that has surrounded this case, anyone with even a tangential link to the events of the Holocaust can be brought up on charges (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/12/john-demjanjuk-convicted-_n_860960.html). Of course, it will take lots and lots of money to track these old men down... err... hunt for those secret Nazis that could be hiding in plain sight in communities all across America and apply the appropriate 'pressure' to ensure prosecutors feel obligated to take the cases regardless of their merits.



There was no evidence that Demjanjuk 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.

Thomas Walther, who led the investigation that prompted Germany to prosecute Demjanjuk, said before the verdict that other low-ranking Nazi helpers could now face prosecution.

"It could be very soon that more are brought to the table," he said. "This case is a door-opener."

Integral to the prosecution's case was an SS identity card that allegedly shows a picture of a young Demjanjuk, and indicates he trained at the SS Trawniki camp and was posted to Sobibor.

Though court experts said the card appears genuine, the defense maintains it is a fake produced by the Soviet KGB.

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.

[Strike For The South]

Yes those poor, poor, nazi death camp guards

You lost bro, this is the way it works. BOHICA

[PanzerJaeger]

Yes those poor, poor, nazi death camp guards

I'm more concerned with those that weren't and are brought up anyway on the flimsiest of evidence to feed the monster.


You lost bro, this is the way it works. BOHICA

IDKWTFTM :shame:

[Strike For The South]

I'm more concerned with those that weren't and are brought up anyway on the flimsiest of evidence to feed the monster.
The monster? Those Jewish grandmothers must have some deep pocketbooks

Once again, those poor, poor, nazi death camp guards


IDKWTFTM :shame:

Really? Really?

[HoreTore]

See? This is what makes me genuinely happy. A war criminal convicted, not just shot, his crimes read aloud and judged by those he offended.

[econ21]

... now convicted in a case based entirely on fabricated evidence (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110412/ap_on_re_eu/eu_demjanjuk_fbi_doubts), ...

Reading your link, I don't recognise your characterisation. What the link says is that in 1985 the FBI suspected that the ID document could have been a Soviet fabrication designed to discredit anti-communist exiles. That's far from saying the document was fabricated. I'm more inclined to put weight on what contemporary courts rule about the evidence than Cold War era speculation. I believe in the latest court case, the parties were aware of the FBI document. As your link says, Demjanjuk was keeping a low profile, not an anti-Soviet dissident, so prima facie the Soviet fabrication possibility does not seem compelling.

I'm with Strike on this one, I don't have much sympathy with ex-death camp guards. I'm not convinced we have to get proof of specific criminal acts given that the death camp guards pushed their victims into the gas chambers within an hour of arrival. I agree this is late in day, but proving you were a death camp guard seems sufficient to me. They did not leave many witnesses alive.

[Sarmatian]

Those trials are still very much needed. In Hungary, one of the last "major" nazis Shandor Kepiro is finally on trial in Hungary (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13292464). What's interesting is that he sued Dr. Efraim Zuroff for slander and that case got to court first! Hungarian authorities seemingly did what they could to delay the trial and wait for 97-year old Kepiro to die.

Another thing was that Kepiro was escorted to trial by a large number of ultra-nationalist Hungarians.

It still isn't over and anyone involved should be put on trial.

[Fragony]

I'm with Strike on this one, I don't have much sympathy with ex-death camp guards. I'm not convinced we have to get proof of specific criminal acts given that the death camp guards pushed their victims into the gas chambers within an hour of arrival. I agree this is late in day, but proving you were a death camp guard seems sufficient to me. They did not leave many witnesses alive.

No need to sympathise with them nobody is asking for that. But they aren't necesarily responsible for what happened there. I sometimes wonder what I would do in such a situation, and if I'm honest with myself I would probably be pushing victims into the gas chamber just like everybody else. When someone tells you to do something you are no longer burdened with the responsibility of the act, see the Milgram experiment

[HoreTore]

No need to sympathise with them nobody is asking for that. But they aren't necesarily responsible for what happened there. I sometimes wonder what I would do in such a situation, and if I'm honest with myself I would probably be pushing victims into the gas chamber just like everybody else. When someone tells you to do something you are no longer burdened with the responsibility of the act, see the Milgram experiment

Let's say you grew up in that drug city on the US-mexican border whose name I cannot remember atm(the one with all the shooting).

You're young and poor, with no hope of gaining an income except by joining the drug industry. You advance, and start working as a hitman, killing several people. I can easily see someone doing that, but does that really excuse your crimes? Should you not be treated as other murderers?

[Fragony]

Let's say you grew up in that drug city on the US-mexican border whose name I cannot remember atm(the one with all the shooting).

You're young and poor, with no hope of gaining an income except by joining the drug industry. You advance, and start working as a hitman, killing several people. I can easily see someone doing that, but does that really excuse your crimes? Should you not be treated as other murderers?

By doing so you make a concious choice to advance in a certain enviroment, such is not the case with being positioned as a guard in a concentration-camp. Thing is, if we haven't learned that normal people can do horrible things we haven't learned anything at all.

[PanzerJaeger]

Reading your link, I don't recognise your characterisation. What the link says is that in 1985 the FBI suspected that the ID document could have been a Soviet fabrication designed to discredit anti-communist exiles. That's far from saying the document was fabricated. I'm more inclined to put weight on what contemporary courts rule about the evidence than Cold War era speculation. I believe in the latest court case, the parties were aware of the FBI document. As your link says, Demjanjuk was keeping a low profile, not an anti-Soviet dissident, so prima facie the Soviet fabrication possibility does not seem compelling.

I'm with Strike on this one, I don't have much sympathy with ex-death camp guards. I'm not convinced we have to get proof of specific criminal acts given that the death camp guards pushed their victims into the gas chambers within an hour of arrival. I agree this is late in day, but proving you were a death camp guard seems sufficient to me. They did not leave many witnesses alive.

The FBI's belief that the card was 'quite likely fabricated' is just the latest in a long list of doubts cast on the document (http://articles.latimes.com/1987-08-06/news/mn-1817_1_id-card).



An American document expert told an Israeli court today which is trying alleged war criminal John Demjanjuk that a Nazi identity card in the defendant's name had been altered.

Edna Robinson, a graphology and documents expert from Florida, said that the signature on the card from the Trawniki training camp was not Demjanjuk's and that an original photograph had been replaced.

"I reached the conclusion that the document had been altered," Robinson said. "The photograph was removed and replaced."

Demjanjuk, 67, says he is the victim of mistaken identity and denies Israeli charges that he killed hundreds of thousands of Jews as the gas chamber operator "Ivan the Terrible" at the Treblinka death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was stripped of his American citizenship and extradited from the United States last year on charges that he lied to U.S. immigration officials.

"I arrived at an unqualified opinion that the signature on the ID card is not by the same writer who wrote Demjanjuk on the standards," Robinson said, referring to examples of the defendant's signatures on other documents.

She said she decided the card had been altered after conducting ink and paper fiber tests. Robinson also said a validation stamp overlapping the photograph and the card was printed with two different types of ink.



And.. (http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1996/289607.shtml)


The world expert on the authenticity or non-authenticity of Nazi German documents is Dr. Louis Ferdinand Werner, who is the head of the BKA laboratories of the German police in Wiesbaden. He examined the Trawniki card three weeks before the case started in Israel, that is to say the middle of January 1987. He told the Israeli chief expert on documents, Amnon Bezaleli, who testified for four days in the witness box in the case in Jerusalem, that not only is the Trawniki card a forgery, but it is even an amateur forgery, obvious when you first look at it. And he asked for the document to be left with him for 10 days so he would be able to provide an extensive expert opinion about all the faults and forgeries on the card.

Even the OSI's own people admit it has been altered (http://www.vosizneias.com/57540/2010/06/10/demjanjuk-id-card-photo-was-once-removed/).

Finally, a worthwhile read for those interested.



Two key issues

For 30 years, Demjanjuk has maintained his innocence. Yet now, the German prosecutors who say that he was present in Sobibor will use a Travniki identity card to attempt to prove this claim and will argue that he was a volunteer there. While it is impossible in the context of an article like this to thoroughly deal with these charges, nonetheless they deserve at least some comment.

In the book Defending Ivan the Terrible, Yoram Sheftel, the Israeli defense attorney in the successful Demjanjuk appeal, points out that -- from the very beginning -- American authorities with the help of Israeli police prepared “photo spreads” to be presented to Sobibor survivors in which Demjanjuk’s picture was included for identification.

Sheftel indicates that “all 10 Sobibor survivors in Israel, who were shown the photographs, recognized neither Demjanjuk nor Federenko as someone from the Sobibor death camp. Thus, at that early stage, it was clear that the Soviet plot to present Demjanjuk as a former guard at the Sobibor death camp was totally unfounded.”

So far as is known there is no witness who can establish that Demjanjuk even harmed someone, much less murdered anyone. Only one statement taken by the Soviet KGB secret police of a Sobibor guard named Danylchenko indicated that Demjanjuk was also there. Danylchenko later indicated he was tortured by the KGB and has since died without ever being cross-examined. That is the extent of the known German prosecution evidence on presence.

With regard to the Travniki card, Sheftel indicates that on Jan. 23, 1987, the original Travniki document that purports to indicate that Demjanjuk was in Sobibor was provided for examination to the German police force’s main criminal-identification laboratory in Weisbaden, known as BKA. The laboratory analysts indicated that even after a cursory examination, it was evident that the document was a forgery. They pointed out that the face in the photograph which the prosecution in Israel had identified as Demjanjuk’s had been posted on to the uniform using photo-montage techniques. The picture was not originally attached to the card, but had been transferred from another document. There was no match between the seal on the Travniki picture and that on the document itself. Further German analysis was stopped by the Israelis with this initial report.

The Travniki document was also the subject matter of the evidence of Julius Grant, the world’s foremost forensic expert and the man who revealed the forgeries of the “Mussolini diaries” and the “Hitler diaries.”

Having analyzed all the known signatures of Demjanjuk in the years 1947 to 1986, Grant testified that the Demjanjuk signature on the card differed from all the others in the way the Ds and Ms were formed and in the fact that in all other signatures the writing was continuous but on the card it was not. Further, Grant pointed out that there were two holes in the right side of the picture on the card whilst on the paper under the holes in the photograph there were no holes. Judging by the purple ink found inside the holes which was similar to ink used by the KGB and the nature of the spacing of the holes, Grant concluded it was more logical to assume that the photograph was unstapled from some other Soviet documents and attached to the card in the Soviet Union, than that it was attached in Travniki in 1942.

Israeli officials refused to allow Grant to detach the photo from the card to make a conclusive finding, but he nonetheless concluded his evidence by saying that “the Travniki document cannot be an authentic document belonging to the defendant Demjanjuk.”

As for the contention that non-German guards in Nazi concentration camps were volunteers, the evidence indicates that basically such Wachmaener were chosen by the Germans based on physical fitness and told they could either become camp guards or remain in prisoner of war camps where they were mistreated or died. Those who tried to escape were shot. What choice is there in these alternatives? This assumes that the prosecution can establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Demjanjuk was in Sobibor in the first place. This is a tall order to fill.



Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/53709/#ixzz1ME6xy6EM

[HoreTore]

Something tells me PJ would've treated this trial differently if it was an ex-STASI member or someone like that on trial in an ex-eastern bloc country....

[rory_20_uk]

War is messy and has a lot of grey areas.

After one ends, all is sanitised and we divide people into Goodies and Baddies. There are rules of course:


We are the goodies.
They are the baddies.
We can have done no wrong.
Beating us in itself can be a crime.
Any events at the time, be it coercion or detestation of other forces must be ignored.
Sabotage, assassination and threatening with firing squads are fine if undertaken by the Goodies as necessary acts of war. If undertaken by the Baddies are merely acts to show how bad they are.
"Following orders" is fine when doing such heroic acts as firebombing cities or nuking them (if the Goodies - see above), but not being a guard (if a baddy).

I am sure there were sadists there. I am equally sure most weren't. I don't think of myself as a sadist and I've no real "thing" against any particular group (except football hooligans) but if the options are to be a concentration camp doctor or have my family and myself into the concentration camp, I'll choose the former.

Since this means I've entered the "grey" world of making choices under extreme coercion it would be resolved that I was "bad" and therefore guilty.

~:smoking:

[HoreTore]

Nonsense, rory.

NRK showed an interesting documentary about two brothers last night. One served as an officer in the SS, the other was a prisoner of the gestapo, first in Norway then in Germany. The reason why he was in the SS, was that his brother was first sentenced to death, but if he would serve in the SS, his brother would be sentenced to prison instead. After the war, he was accused of treason along with all the others affiliated with the nazi's. In the trial, his brother and father testified that this was the reason he joined the SS, and the judge found him not guilty. "Get out of here, you don't belong here, you're not a bad man. You're free." was the words of the judge.

[PanzerJaeger]

Something tells me PJ would've treated this trial differently if it was an ex-STASI member or someone like that on trial in an ex-eastern bloc country....

He was a Soviet POW. Please keep up.

Anyway, a long but most excellent commentary (http://www.esquire.com/features/john-demjanjuk-1109) on the entire affair up to August of 2010. It is worth the time.



Demjanjuk didn't hang, of course. After five years alone on death row in Israel's Ayalon prison — where Adolf Eichmann, too, had sat, the desk jockey who saw to it that the trains groaning with doomed Jews ran on time, and who was strung up in 1962; Eichmann and Demjanjuk are the only men Israel has ever tried for the Nazi genocidal crimes — Demjanjuk presented evidence on appeal that another man, one Ivan Marchenko, was Ivan the Terrible, and that Israel was about to hang the wrong Ukrainian.

Funny thing: The Israeli Supreme Court decided to let Ivan Demjanjuk walk.

The horribly funny thing — not to the Israelis, many of whom had doubts about prosecuting Demjanjuk from the start — was that some of the evidence that led to his release in 1993 had come to light years before and was withheld from the Israelis by the American government — the Office of Special Investigations of the Department of Justice, the very same cadre of Nazi hunters who had urged Israel to charge him with being Ivan the Terrible.

Why? Because Ivan the Terrible was a trophy fish, and John Demjanjuk was small fry, and whatever doubt the OSI harbored about his true crimes — and the records show that some of its investigators there felt doubts galore — if the agency wanted to burnish its reputation and justify its budget, it needed a villain big and bad enough to convince the cautious Israelis to mount a show trial.

Funny thing: The strongest documentary evidence the OSI did give to Israel, an SS-issued ID card, clearly put Demjanjuk at Sobibor during the same time that Ivan the Terrible was at Treblinka. The three judges and the lawyers on both sides wrestled vainly with this inconvenience, but the Treblinka survivors' eyewitness testimony — sanctified, consecrated, beyond need of proof by virtue of their hideous suffering and lifelong grief — condemned John Demjanjuk to death.

But the kicker, the real punch line, was yet to come. On appeal, the Supreme Court of Israel, faced with dozens of affidavits from Treblinka guards identifying Ivan Marchenko as Ivan the Terrible, unanimously overturned Demjanjuk's death sentence, and also unanimously ruled that Israel could not retry him for crimes he may have committed at Sobibor — because he had not been extradited for Sobibor, because no Sobibor survivors could identify him, and because, as chief judge Meir Shamgar wrote, "The complete truth is not the prerogative of the human judge."

Funny thing, though: The OSI, even after being rebuked by the U. S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals for its "reckless disregard for the truth" in its pursuit of Demjanjuk, continued to hound him for lying on his emigration forms in 1952.

Again the OSI stripped him of his restored citizenship, but prosecuting him for war crimes was beyond American jurisprudence. Doing so required a willing helper — another country with an ax to grind.

Poland, home to Sobibor, passed. Ukraine, his land of birth, said ni. Eretz Yisroel had long since had its fill of Demjanjuk.

Which left the Germans, ja?

...


The beauty of this theory is not only that it permits Germany to prosecute Untermenschen cogs in the death machine of the Final Solution but also that, sixty-five years after Hitler's fall, it will help the Zentrale pursue more investigations — from its peak years, 1967 to 1971, the agency employed 49 investigators and a total of 121 employees; the entire staff today numbers 18, with only 6 investigators — and survive a few years more. Soon enough the clock will run out on all the ancient Amtsträger — puttering in their gardens, petting their grandchildren — but they can't rest easy. Not yet.

Still, it seems peculiarly German, this theory. These Wachmänner were pure products of the most criminally insane nation in human history, Nazi Germany, trained and put to work by the Nazis in places of demonic brutality — places created and run by Germans who largely paid little or no price for their hideous crimes. And now — now: sixty-five years later — a Ukrainian clump of Red Army fodder, a dumb beast the likes of which the Nazis murdered by the millions, has been transmuted into a German official so that Germans may prosecute him for helping to murder Jews at a German death camp.

Worse, Demjanjuk is essentially on trial not for anything he did, but simply for being at Sobibor. No specific criminal acts need be alleged, much less proved. Page through transcripts of previous Nazi trials and you'll find a rigorous focus on particulars, because that is what should be required to convict a defendant. No one in any such trial ever was convicted simply on the basis of being present at the scene.

And the test case for this theory is the nobody who did a seven-year stretch in Israel for crimes he didn't commit at Treblinka?

Funny thing, this German justice.



Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/john-demjanjuk-1109-5#ixzz1MEGdZM2f

[HoreTore]

He was a Soviet POW. Please keep up.

Thank you for confirming my suspicions.

[rory_20_uk]

Nonsense, rory.

NRK showed an interesting documentary about two brothers last night. One served as an officer in the SS, the other was a prisoner of the gestapo, first in Norway then in Germany. The reason why he was in the SS, was that his brother was first sentenced to death, but if he would serve in the SS, his brother would be sentenced to prison instead. After the war, he was accused of treason along with all the others affiliated with the nazi's. In the trial, his brother and father testified that this was the reason he joined the SS, and the judge found him not guilty. "Get out of here, you don't belong here, you're not a bad man. You're free." was the words of the judge.

I've no idea what point you're trying to make, beyond giving an example of where coercion works, and what happens to those who don't go along with the system. Do you think these brothers were the only ones threatened? Or are you saying that if this person had been detained c. 40 years ago and had some contemporary relatives to say he was a good chap he'd have got off too?

~:smoking:

[HoreTore]

I've no idea what point you're trying to make, beyond giving an example of where coercion works, and what happens to those who don't go along with the system. Do you think these brothers were the only ones threatened? Or are you saying that if this person had been detained c. 40 years ago and had some contemporary relatives to say he was a good chap he'd have got off too?

~:smoking:

I'm saying that in your example, when having to choose between having your family sent to concentration camps and being a concentration camp doctor, you would not be termed a "guilty baddie" if you chose to join as a doctor, as other people have been found not guilty in similar situations.

[rory_20_uk]

You showed one case study, not a cohort analysis which would be somewhat robust.

As I'm sure you are aware, some doctors were convicted of war crimes / crimes against humanity. I imagine that they pleaded "following orders" or coercion, but to no avail - even though it is highly doubtful they were informed as to what they were going to be doing. The Allied doctors who did such lovely acts as inject subjects with plutonium without informed consent never had to go near a court room.

~:smoking:

[HoreTore]

"Following orders" was deemed not sufficient defense, so that not working is obvious.

I'm sure people who were forced were found guilty, but people who were forced were also found not guilty, so it's not as black and white as you make it out.

[Shibumi]

If I understood it correctly, he was a POW who was forced to labor in the final stages of the war - you know - the stage where the German military machine had all but given up and shot their own residents on the street if they did not look nazi enough.

If I had the choice of a bullet to the head or serving as guard I would do the latter. Think twice before you disagree.

Accusing PJ of nazi sympathies for bringing this up seems far fetched to say the least.

[econ21]

If I understood it correctly, he was a POW who was forced to labor in the final stages of the war - ...

As I understand it, he's denying he was a guard in death camp. Whether he was or not, seems to me the key thing. The German courts have ruled he was. Maybe that will be overturned at a later stage - as the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the "Ivan the Terrible" charge. But at the moment, I'm not inclined to second guess them.

If he wasn't a death camp guard then, of course, he's the victim of an injustice. If he was a death camp guard, you could try to fly the "he was forced to" argument but that's not the argument he's making and not one I would have any sympathy with. My sympathies would go to the ones pushed into the gas chambers, not the ones doing the pushing.

[Fragony]

As I understand it, he's denying he was a guard in death camp. Whether he was or not, seems to me the key thing. The German courts have ruled he was. Maybe that will be overturned at a later stage - as the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the "Ivan the Terrible" charge. But at the moment, I'm not inclined to second guess them.

If he wasn't a death camp guard then, of course, he's the victim of an injustice. If he was a death camp guard, you could try to fly the "he was forced to" argument but that's not the argument he's making and not one I would have any sympathy with. My sympathies would go to the ones pushed into the gas chambers, not the ones doing the pushing.

Doesn't matter if he denies being a camp-guard. If he was, was he really accesory to Sobibor being the lovely place that it happened to be. And if he wasn't he wasn't

[Louis VI the Fat]

I am torn on prosecuting people in their nineties. Nazi perpetrators don't really come much younger anymore. Invariably, they are old, sickly men, barely capable of overseeing their defense. Should Germany now raid it's nursing homes for nonagenarians to trial?
Then again, I am a vindictive man. If you had killed one of mine, seventy years ago, it would never be too late for justice.


We wuz just fighting the commies and besides there had been a famine in the Ukraine and also western liberal democracy is also evil and so I killed Jewish babies but I didn't really understand what I wuz doing and then you people threw a bomb on my house too so you is evil too.Yes, right, fine. This is the excuse for nazism in general, not just for 'small fish' (who like only aided the murder of 26000 people). Whatever. I'd rather German ultranationalism / nazi apologism was not the world's biggest crybaby show. They will simultaneously shout that they are superior invincible Ubermensch plus cry they are but wee girls who were just helpless victims of circumstance caught up in events beyond their control.

[Brenus]

“the options are to be a concentration camp doctor or have my family and myself into the concentration camp, I'll choose the former.” It was never the options. Some SS refused to participate in mass killing and get away as it was/is allowed by the German Army Rules of Conduct.

“If I had the choice of a bullet to the head or serving as guard I would do the latter. Think twice before you disagree.”
And you deserted as fast you can.
Happened to a former colleague’s uncle. As Alsatian, he was a “German People” for Hitler and as he was tall, he was sent to the 1st SS Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler. He couldn’t escape to be enrolled as the family could be sent to the Struthoff Concentration Camp. The same punishment if he deserted.
To cut short, he and 2 comrades became MIA on the Eastern Front lines and went back by foot, travelling only by night, to France. They arrived in 1945, ignoring the war was over. The sad thing is one get killed by a French peasant when they were foraging for food…
So it was always possible to escape.

[Louis VI the Fat]

So it was always possible to escape.Demjanjuk had escaped. He had escaped to the German side, where his heart was.

[PanzerJaeger]

Demjanjuk had escaped. He had escaped to the German side, where his heart was.

Louis, even a vengeful heart should direct its ire at the right people, don't you think?



Demjanjuk was never a Nazi. Nazis were Germans and they believed in the purity of the Aryan race. They had no time for mere Slavs like Demjanjuk or other races that were either to be liquidated or driven into submission and used as servants for the Third Reich. As a prisoner of war captured by the Germans from the Red Army and allegedly put to work in the death camps, it can hardly be said that John Demjanjuk “volunteered” to be such a guard.

The more troubling aspect of this case is, however, that for over a decade, those who sought to bring Demjanjuk to “justice” maintained that he was in fact Ivan Grozny, also known as Ivan the Terrible, a grisly figure who was indeed involved in the persecution of inmates in the Treblinka Nazi concentration camp.

These accusations led to Demjanjuk’s deportation to Israel where witness after witness identified Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible. They were certain and admitted no doubt. Following his conviction in the Israeli court, however, and during the process of Demjanjuk’s appeal, the defense team located witnesses who knew the real Ivan the Terrible and who signed sworn statements attesting to the fact that John Demjanjuk was not Ivan the Terrible. Included among these statements, according to those who worked on the defense team, was a statement by the real Ivan the Terrible’s girlfriend who definitively swore Demjanjuk was innocent of these charges.


The power of this evidence, as well as the reopening of the Demjanjuk case in the United States by the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals while the Israeli appeal was pending, forced the Israeli appellate court to conclude that a mistrial had taken place. The judges found that Demjanjuk was innocent of the charges and allowed him to return to the United States.

Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship was restored after the U.S. federal court found the Office of Special Investigations had been guilty of prosecutorial misconduct for not revealing exculpatory evidence to the defense team that would have initially blocked the deportation of Demjanjuk to Israel.

After more than a decade of maintaining that Demjanjuk was at one camp and was Ivan the Terrible, the prosecutorial team now maintains that Demjanjuk was not there, but in another Nazi death camp where he was an accomplice to the murder of not just a few, but of no less than 29,000 victims! Where was the evidence of the 29,000 victims when he was being tried in Israel on the first round? How was it possible for him to hide – for almost 65 years – from his role in helping to murder 29,000 camp inmates since the end of World War II. This possibility seems far-fetched, considering that – for the last 30 years – he was the target of a relentless campaign to convict him of any kind of Nazi atrocity.

Ironically, a few years ago, Germany passed a law setting a time limitation on the prosecution of German war criminals. Thus Germans, who were primarily the ones responsible for the death camps, cannot be prosecuted, but individuals from other countries, like Demjanjuk, can!

What troubles me the most about this case is the silence of individuals and organizations ostensibly dedicated to human rights and their failure to speak up in support of Demjanjuk. For example, I was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization dedicated to the protection of the civil liberties of Americans, including protecting the due process rights of individuals. I asked them specifically to speak up in the Demjanjuk case and was met with silence.

I understand very well that defending someone accused of being a Nazi is a difficult challenge in our society, but isn’t it in precisely such circumstances that your true dedication to your beliefs is revealed?

Demjanjuk may not have been a saint. However, we are not measuring him against the standard of perfection. Let us remember that there are very few participants who had nothing to hide about their conduct in World War II. Let us remember the Allied fire bombings of Dresden and Hamburg. Many consider those attacks to be war crimes. Let us remember the roles played by Italy and Japan as allies of Nazi Germany. Let us not forget that the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 to enable Hitler to invade Poland and carve it up with Stalin. Let us remember the collaboration of Vichy France. Let us consider the role of some 150,000 Jewish soldiers in the German army, including at least a dozen high-ranking officers of Jewish descent as well as the role played by Jewish Kapos, police and the Judenrat during the war. Let us remember that it was German officers and German soldiers that governed the death camps of Nazi Germany – not Ukrainians like Demjanjuk.

While the world ignores such instances of Nazi collaboration, it watches in silence as prosecutors seek to pin the tail on the donkey in Demjanjuk’s case.

Why?

The reason is because this is not really about Demjanjuk as a camp guard at all. That is clear from the fact that he is accused of being an accessory to 29,000 deaths, but not of murdering anyone. Isn’t that odd? That is because there is no evidence of his killing anyone. This is an accusation of guilt by association. It is founded on the belief that anyone who was a guard at any Nazi camp was by that very fact guilty of a war crime. No allowance is made for the possibility that such guards were not there of their own volition but forced to be there by threats to their families or other circumstances. Mere presence was enough. In this sense the Demjanjuk case is little more than a Western show trial to reinvigorate the memory of the Holocaust and the collateral damage to people like Demjanjuk and others is negligible or even deserving as far as those who are running this campaign are concerned. It is a show trial along the lines of what we saw in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany previously. Those who seek to condemn the atrocities of those regimes and who hold the rule of law dear to their hearts owe it to Demjanjuk to rally to his defense.

I have very little in common with American conservative Patrick Buchanan otherwise, but he is the only prominent political commentator who has spoken up about this witch hunt and I respect him for that. But where are all the others? It appears they are not concerned that the Demjanjuk case demonstrates that American courts can be politicized and made to bow to the pressures of expediency. It appears they are prepared to accept that America cannot always be relied on to be balanced, fair and to protect the rights of its citizens and the rule of law.



Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/41895/#ixzz1MGTdq77o

[Louis VI the Fat]

Louis, even a vengeful heart should direct its ire at the right people, don't you think?Sure.

Therefore, my ire is directed at ideologically driven nazis with SS tattoos in their armpit. Such as Demjanjuk.

[PanzerJaeger]

Sure.

Therefore, my ire is directed at ideologically driven nazis with SS tattoos in their armpit. Such as Demjanjuk.

:shame:

This, in one sentence, shows how the Nazi hunters have been able to pervert justice and hound an old man to his grave - a potent mix of raw emotion and a lack of historical understanding. Anyone familiar with the history of the Russian POWs pressed into service knows that they were forced to submit to the tattoos (http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1549633.php/Demjanjuk-scar-may-be-from-SS-tattoo-German-court-hears).

[Tellos Athenaios]

Depending on tattoo, it's actually a blood group maker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_blood_group_tattoo).

[Louis VI the Fat]

:shame:

This, in one sentence, shows how the Nazi hunters have been able to pervert justice and hound an old man to his grave - a potent mix of raw emotion and a lack of historical understanding. Anyone familiar with the history of the Russian POWs pressed into service knows that they were forced to submit to the tattoos (http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1549633.php/Demjanjuk-scar-may-be-from-SS-tattoo-German-court-hears).Pressed into service? Nah. Persuaded, at best. People loved nazis back then. Better food, better uniforms. Plus there were all sorts of perks to the job, such as the ability to kill Jews and Russians. Or Poles. Or Serbians. Whichever was your own particular hang-up. What's not to like?


Most importantly, you got to fight that wickedly evil totalitarian system of Bolshevism. This is perhaps the best level of defense. Although not as good as the knowledge that two wrongs don't make a right, or as the InsaneApache description that the two totalitarian regimes were but two cheeks of the same arse.


Vlasov, where Demjanjuk served fighting Bolshevism. Although the Germans didn't trust them enough to hand them a fighting role, limiting, until near the end of the war, their role in fighting Bolshevism to murdering Jewish children.
http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=5830

[PanzerJaeger]

Pressed into service?

Yes. I'm not sure if you understand the situation in the Russian POW camps during the period.


Vlasov, where Demjanjuk served fighting Bolshevism. Although the Germans didn't trust them enough to hand them a fighting role, limiting, until near the end of the war, their role in fighting Bolshevism to murdering Jewish children.
http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=5830

Can you quote exactly where in the article it cites the Vlasov Army's murdering of Jewish children or were involved in the death camps?


But even in the last weeks of the war, when the Soviet Army was already at the German border, only two incomplete divisions led by Vlasov were armed. One of them helped liberate Prague when a popular uprising took place in the city in May 1945. But the Vlasovites left to give way to the Soviet Army.

"Looking into the events surrounding the liberation of Prague in May 1945, when Vlasov's forces turned against the Germans, we found that the switch was not prompted by orders but came as the decision of ordinary soldiers," Petukhov said.

[lars573]

Yes. I'm not sure if you understand the situation in the Russian POW camps during the period.
Indeed. Many of those nasty death camps in Poland and the like were started for warehousing the Bolshevik hordes till they were dead.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Can you quote exactly where in the article it cites the Vlasov Army's murdering of Jewish children or were involved in the death camps?Nowhere. Fighting on behalf of nazi Germany is what Demjanjuk did after he was long released from a POW camp, after he was no longer 'pressed' into gassing Jewish children.

[Samurai Waki]

Demjanjuk was complicit with the Nazi's, to what extent we'll probably never know. The man is 91, and while he may have been a potential target fifty years ago the expiration date is up... nice try, but too little too late.

[Brenus]

“Nazis were Germans and they believed in the purity of the Aryan race. They had no time for mere Slavs like Demjanjuk or other races that were either to be liquidated or driven into submission and used as servants for the Third Reich.”
That is a lie and I think you know it, as you are normally quite well informed.
So, all this analyse is based on wrong fact.
The Germans had several SS division made of Slaves or “Non-Aryen” populations, e.g. Albanian Skanderberg and Bosnian/Croats Handshar and Kama, French Charlemagne etc…

[HoreTore]

Indeed.

The russians fighting for the germans were simply renamed "cossacks", who were genetically acceptable as a group thanks to their opposition to communism. Happened from the very start of Barbarossa. As an additional bonus, plenty of these "cossacks" were more than willing to progrom the jews yet again....






Just like there were communists within the ranks of the Wehrmacht, there were Nazi's in the Red Army.

[Skullheadhq]

“Nazis were Germans and they believed in the purity of the Aryan race. They had no time for mere Slavs like Demjanjuk or other races that were either to be liquidated or driven into submission and used as servants for the Third Reich.”
That is a lie and I think you know it, as you are normally quite well informed.
So, all this analyse is based on wrong fact.
The Germans had several SS division made of Slaves or “Non-Aryen” populations, e.g. Albanian Skanderberg and Bosnian/Croats Handshar and Kama, French Charlemagne etc…

Since when aren't French aryan?

[Brenus]

“Since when aren't French aryan? “
According to Nazi’s definition of Aryen? For ever.

From the real Aryen? Never were, excepted the few Gypsies arriving in the XI Century…
French are a mixed population of Celt, Germanic tribes (Francs) and other waves of invaders who settled, raped (or visa versa) and made this territory home.

[Louis VI the Fat]

And Basque Aquitanians, you lebensraum seeking imperialist invading Celt murderer. I want all you people brought before court, now that the Demjanjuk case has established that ancient crimes can be prosecuted for all eternity.


All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgæ inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our Gauls, the third. All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws. The river Garonne separates the Gauls from the Aquitani - Caesar, De Bello Gallico.

[Brenus]

“you lebensraum seeking imperialist invading Celt murderer”. Rhhhaaa, how you can even write this outright lie without committing suicide in shame? You are the Valet of the Imperialist you the Parisian, annexing the Principauté of the Dombes and abolishing its legitimate Parliament hold in Trévoux, jewel of the Christianity, without any reason…