Dutch survivors seek 'justice not vengeance' from Demjanjuk

Sixteen Dutch survivors and relatives of victims of the Nazi extermination camp Sobibor plan to stand as coplaintiffs in the trial against alleged former camp guard and war criminal John Demjanjuk.

They all knew each other from the remembrance trips to Sobibor - the Nazi extermination camp in Poland where 27,000 Dutch Jews were gassed. So when it looked like John Demjanjuk, who is accused of having assisted in the killing of 29,000 Jews at Sobibor, was finally going to be extradited to Germany, the Dutch Sobibor Foundation didn't have much trouble convincing Sobibor survivors and relatives in the Netherlands to stand as coplaintiffs in his trial.

Of the thirteen people who were initially approached - Sobibor survivors and nine relatives of people who died there - nine said yes. "In the meantime, we have sixteen people prepared to be coplaintiffs in the trial against Demjanjuk," says Johannes Houwink ten Cate, a professor of holocaust and genocide studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is also the secretary of a group of academics who give legal advice to the Dutch surviving relatives of Sobibor.

Too sick?

Under German law, Nebenkläger or coplaintiffs have the right to call witnesses and to interrogate the defendant. "Justice, not vengeance" is their motive, Cornelius Nestler, a professor in criminal law who advises the relatives, recently told Der Spiegel.

Demjanjuk (89), who has lived in the US since the 1950s, was extradited to Germany on Monday after a months-long legal battle. Demjanjuk's lawyers argued that he was too sick for the trip or to stand trial. Prison doctors in Munich this week declared Demjanjuk fit to be locked up, but a German court still has to decide if he is also fit enough to stand trial.

Houwink ten Cate says he is in possession of documents, including an identity card, which prove "beyond a doubt" that John Demjanjuk worked as a "soldier of the SS" in Sobibor.

John Demjanjuk August 1977: US justice department submits a request to revoke Demjanjuk's citizenship on the basis that he had concealed his involvement with Nazi death camps on his immigration application in 1951. Holocaust survivors had identified Demjanjuk on a photo spread used in the investigation of Fedor Fedorenko, a guard at Treblinka. June 23, 1981: a US judge rules that Demjanjuk lied on his application, that he had served as an SS guard at Treblinka and for a brief period at Sobibor, and that he had undergone training at the Trawniki SS training camp. February 1986: Demjanjuk is extradited to Israel. April 18, 1988: Demjanjuk is found guilty and sentenced to death. July 29, 1993: Israeli supreme court overturns guilty verdict, saying Demjanjuk had been wrongly identified as Iwan the Terrible, a notorious guard at Treblinka. Demjanjuk is released and returns to the US. May 20, 1999: the US justice department files a new civil complaint against Demjanjuk, alleging that Demjanjuk served as a guard at the Sobibor and Majdanek camps. A long legal battle begins. June 19, 2008: Germany asks for extradition. May 11, 2009: Demjanjuk is deported to Germany, arriving at Munich's Stadelheim prison on May 12. Click here for a profile of John Demjanjuk by Dr. Jules Schelvis.

The Netherlands has provided important documents for the case against Demjanjuk: transport lists from the Dutch transit camp Westerbork to Sobibor are the only Sobibor transport lists that have survived for the period Demjanjuk worked there. More than 34,000 Jews were sent from Westerbork to Sobibor; and 29,000 died there. Only eighteen people deported from Westerbork survived the war.

Demjanjuk already stood trial once in Israel, but in 1993 an appeals court there cleared him after it turned out he had been falsely accused of being "Iwan the Terrible," an infamous guard at the Treblinka extermination camp.

Houwink ten Cate: "Let me say it once more: Demjanjuk is still often wrongly identified as Iwan the Terrible. But this is about Sobibor, not Treblinka."

Footsoldiers

There is a substantial difference in the charges being brought against Demjanjuk this time around. Demjanjuk did not have a leading position at Sobibor. There were on average 18 to 22 Germans present at Sobibor; they were helped by 100 to 140 so-called "Trawniki" men like Demjanjuk.

"Trawniki" men were Red Army soldiers who were taken prisoners of war by the Wehrmacht, the German army, and were later recruited by the Waffen-SS and trained at the Trawniki camp near Lublin.

"They were the footsoldiers of the final solution," says Houwink ten Cate. "This small group of perpetrators and accomplices killed 29,000 people over a seven-month period in 1943. Demjanjuk is the only one of them stil alive."

The question of Demjanjuk's age and poor health is "not very important", says Houwink ten Cate. The only thing that matters is whether he is "compos mentis, of sound mind", he says. That is now for the doctors to decide.

The president of Germany's central Jewish council, Charlotte Knoblauch, has called for a speedy trial. "The remaining war criminals still at large have to know that there can be no mercy, regardless of how old they are."