Germany – Closing Arguments to Begin Next Week in Demjanjuk Trial

Munich, Germany – A German court on Thursday closed the evidentiary phase in the trial of John Demjanjuk, who is accused of serving as a guard at the Nazi’s Sobibor death camp, rejecting a raft of defence motions and setting the stage for closing arguments to begin next week.

Demjanjuk, 90, is accused of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder for allegedly having been a guard at the camp in occupied Poland. He denies the charges, saying he never served the Nazis in any camp.

A verdict had been expected as early as mid-March, but defence attorney Ulrich Busch flooded the court with motions over the last month requesting new evidence and witnesses.

The judges dismissed all of the motions — more than 350 — saying that many were issues that were already resolved in court and that others were more statements than requests.

They rejected, for example, a request for a new analysis of a Nazi-issued identity card that allegedly shows a photograph of Demjanjuk and indicates he was sent to work at a guard at Sobibor.

Experts have testified that the card appears genuine, but Demjanjuk’s defence team maintains the card, which was originally in Russian hands, is a fake made by the Soviet KGB.

Busch accused the judges of bias after they handed down their 13-page decision.

“What happened here today was predetermined,” he said in court.

Ahead of the decision, the judges did read into the record a statement requested from the defence of a former Sobibor prisoner, who is now dead.

In the statement, Dov Freiberg told authorities in 1976 that he had been responsible for cleaning the barracks of the Ukrainian guards at Sobibor and could recall most of them, but that “I don’t remember the name Demjanjuk.”

When shown a photo array that included Demjanjuk’s picture, he said that Demjanjuk’s face seemed familiar but that he couldn’t identify him “with certainty.”

The prosecution argues that after Demjanjuk, a Soviet Red Army soldier, was captured by the Germans in 1942, he agreed to serve under the SS as a guard.

Demjanjuk denies ever serving as a guard. He says he spent most of the rest of the war after being captured in Nazi camps for prisoners of war before joining the so-called Vlasov Army of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others. That army was formed to fight with the Germans against the encroaching Soviets in the final months of the war.

The last two sessions of the trial were cancelled after Demjanjuk was hospitalized with an intestinal infection and low blood hemoglobin levels. He was brought back in Thursday, however, after being given a blood transfusion and the doctor declared him fit for trial.

A verdict is now anticipated in mid-May.