Demjanjuk trial

Sobibor was a Nazi concentration camp in occupied Poland; a death camp with the sole purpose of murdering Jews. Each day, up to 2,000 people died in the gas chambers. It's estimated that in total around 250,000 were killed at Sobibor.

The camp's guards forced the victims out of the trains, from the platform on into the gas chambers. They operated the chambers and let the lethal carbon monoxide into what looked like harmless shower rooms. Afterwards, they dumped the bodies into mass graves, and prepared the chambers for the next group of victims.

One of those accomplices was the Ukrainian Ivan "John" Demjanjuk. He stands accused of having been being accessory to the murder of at least 29,000 Jews between March and September 1943.

Documents show that - together with fellow guards - he was trained for these deadly tasks in an SS camp. Before that, he had been a prisoner of war. It is possible that he offered his services to the SS out of fear for his own safety.

But this does not diminish his guilt.

Demjanjuk dismisses the accusations. He claims he knew nothing of what happened at Sobibor - or later on Majdanek and Flossenbuerg. He says he is being confused with a cousin with the same name. He insists that he himself was merely a prisoner of war. But the evidence is overwhelmingly against him.

Demjanjuk probably was only a henchman, a cog in the machinery of murder. There certainly have been bigger Nazi criminals and many of them never were brought to justice. This was a failure of the German justice system.

The Munich trial is likely to be the last big Nazi trial in Germany. Demajanjuk is 89 - an old, possibly very ill man who fails to see the error of his ways and demands mercy before even having been found guilty.

John Demjanjuk is to be put on trial in accordance with the rule of law. The trial is expected to take in account the old age and the poor health of the accused. There's no doubt that it will be a long and difficult trial, one with an uncertain outcome.

The challenge will be to prove Demjanjuk's individual guilt. And it's far from clear whether or not he will one day serve a sentence in a German prison.

But does that mean that this trial will be pointless? Certainly not.

There's more at stake here than merely the principle that murder is not subject to the statute of limitations. The German judiciary is making the point that no one is immune from justice - even more than six decades after the defeat of the Nazi regime.

Old-age is by no means a reason to be spared justice. The Munich trial is also a signal of condemnation of barbarism and inhumanity.

But even more important is the signal that the trial is sending to the surviving victims and their families. It's a commitment to truth, justice and human dignity regardless of whether or not Demjanjuk is eventually sentenced.

The victims have to live with the horror and trauma for the rest of their lives. And the guilt of those responsible for that does not end when they reach the age of retirement.

Author: Cornelia Rabitz

Editor: Chuck Penfold