Mar. 6



GERMANY/USA:

THE CASE OF JOHN DEMJANJUK----Nazi Guard, Sick Old Man or Both?


German prosecutors believe that John Demjanjuk was a sadistic guard at the
notorious death camp Sobibor. They would like to put him on trial in
Munich, but his family says the 88 year old is too old and frail to be
extradited -- and that he is innocent anyway.

The wife of the alleged concentration camp guard is petite and rather
friendly. She's wearing a blue-green checkered blouse, and her long hair
is pulled back in a bun. Standing there at the door of her yellow
farmhouse in Seven Hills, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, she seems a bit
lost.

Vera Demjanjuk speaks a mishmash of German and English. She looks
exhausted as she explains that everything is starting over again and that,
once again, she will have to fear for the fate of her 88-year-old husband,
John. Her family, she says, has neither the energy nor the means for a new
court case, especially not in far-off Germany. "We are poor and have no
money," she says.

It was 1977 when American Nazi hunters first set their sights on her
husband. At that time, the retired Ford auto worker was stripped of his US
citizenship and extradited to Israel. The Israelis wanted to hang him.
They accused him of being "Ivan the Terrible," the barbarous operator of
the gas chambers at the Treblinka concentration camp.

'A Sick Old Man'

In 1993, though, the Israelis released him after it became clear that
"Ivan the Terrible" was likely someone else. Demjanjuk was allowed to
return to the US. Since then, though, more and more clues have surfaced
indicating that Demjanjuk may actually have been a guard at the Sobibor
death camp in present-day Poland. Prosecutors in Munich want him to stand
trial in Germany. They allege that he took part in the murder of 29,000
people.

Demjanjuk is stateless. Last May, the US Supreme Court refused to hear his
final appeal. Nothing now stands in the way of Demjanjuk's being
extradited to Germany at any time to face the new charges.

Experts from Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation have just
recently verified the validity of Demjanjuk's ID, which puts him in
Sobibor during the period when the crimes took place. Their finding marks
an important step in the effort to try him in Germany.

But there is a potential hitch: Is the 88-year-old physically capable of
standing trial? Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk Jr., has said that his
father is "very frail." His father reportedly suffers from a "blood and
bone marrow disease," which forces him to go to the hospital several times
a month for regular blood transfusions. During the last year, his son
adds, Demjanjuk's condition has worsened so much that he fears his father
couldn't make it through a trial.

John Jr. says that, were his father extradited to Germany, he would need
"round-the-clock medical attention." Even Demjanjuk's lawyer, John
Broadley, says that his client is "a sick old man." The family, though,
has been saying the same thing for decades. He has even appeared in court
in a wheelchair.

'As Strong As an Ox'

Nine years ago, Jonathan Drimmer was part of the US Department of
Justice's Office of Special Investigations when he helped lead the
government's successful efforts to strip Demjanjuk of his citizenship. "At
that time, he was still a huge man," Drimmer says, adding that he was
tall, broad-shouldered and had huge hands. At the time, Demjanjuk was able
to testify for an entire day. "At the end of it, I was exhausted, but he
was still going strong. In 2000 he was as strong as an ox," Drimmer
recounts.

Nowadays, Demjanjuk looks like the 88-year-old he is, says his neighbor
Erik Keller, a young graphic designer, who chats with Demjanjuk often.
According to Keller, Demjanjuk's bad knees won't allow him to stand or
walk for long periods. Keller adds, though, that after a recent snowstorm
Demjanjuk shovelled his driveway. Keller says he helped Demjanjuk clear
his walkway -- and says he has never seen him in a wheelchair.

Keller goes on to say how Demjanjuk spends his summers in jeans and a
sweatshirt tending to his large vegetable garden. And sometimes his wife
Vera even stops by to give him some tomatoes. "They're very neighborly,"
Keller says, adding that Demjanjuk was proud of his garden and speaks
often about his days working at Ford.

But, says Keller, Demjanjuk never talks about anything that happened
before that. And Keller has never asked. As Keller sees it, Demjanjuk
enjoys a little neighborly chit-chat, but "he doesn't talk with a lot of
people."

Dreams and Nightmares

While most of the neighbor's mailboxes have big numbers on them, those on
the Demjanjuks' are small. In front of the house, there is a big sign that
says: "No Trespassing." The single-family residence has an attached
garage, a greenhouse and a big outdoor garden. It's in better condition
than most of the other houses on the street -- despite the fact that
losing his citizenship also meant losing his state retirement benefits,
which forces Demjanjuk to live off support from his children.

Seven Hills is a suburb of Cleveland, formerly a booming industrial city
but now one of the poorest large cities in America. Not long after World
War II, this neighborhood -- with its low-slung houses made of brick and
wood -- was part of the American dream.

But, today, it is also part of a nightmare. Garage doors are locked shut,
shades are pulled and the mailboxes are covered in rust. The streets are
empty of people, and a good 20 minutes can go by before a car drives down
the street. Seven Hills is as good as dead. Only the sound of highway
traffic can be heard in the distance.

'My Father Has Never Killed Anyone '

John Demjanjuk Jr. says that his father doesn't seem concerned about the
discussion in Germany. "He is trying to take care of his health so that he
can survive for a few more years," John Jr. says. As he sees it, there is
absolutely no evidence "that could be used to convict his father in a
criminal proceeding."

The son has made protecting his father his life's labor. "My father has
never killed anyone," John Jr. says. "There's no proof that he had
anything to do with it." John Jr. continues: "He isn't a murderer. He is a
very gentle and friendly person. I know from the bottom of my heart that
he never killed anybody. He was a soldier in the Red Army who became
caught up in the events of World War II."

John Jr. says that he believes his father is innocent and that this
knowledge has given him the strength to fight for his father through the
years. He calls the crimes of the Holocaust "horrendous" -- but says that
"that's not the point."

Contesting the Evidence

But, in the minds of American and German prosecutors, that is the point.
Seven water-tight pieces of evidence substantiate that Demjanjuk served in
the Sobibor concentration camp, says Drimmer, the former prosecutor. Seven
different documents from different archives and agencies. As Drimmer sees
it, this makes it very unlikely that there has been a mistake and very
unlikely that someone could be trying to frame Demjanjuk. Still, 63 years
after the end of the war, it doesn't mean that Demjanjuk will be put on
trial.

John Jr. doesn't have a plausible explanation for how these bits of
evidence incriminating his allegedly innocent father could have found
their way into court papers. But he says that the burden of proof in a
German criminal case is much higher than in the American case which
focused on stripping him of his citizenship. He also says that Germany
doesn't have a single living eyewitness. And, of course, he points out
that his father is too ill to stand trial anyway.

But if you ask him what might really have happened in his father's past,
he doesn't have an answer.

(source: Spiegel Online)