AMID FARCICAL scenes, the trial opened in Munich yesterday of Ukrainian-born John Demjanjuk, accused of assisting in the murder of nearly 28,000 Jews in a Nazi death camp.
Shortly after 11am, a wan 89-year-old man with sunken cheeks was wheeled into the octagonal chamber of Munich high court. Reclined in a high-backed wheelchair and covered in a blue blanket, Mr Demjanjuk kept his eyes shut and his mouth hanging open as he was studied by more than 200 journalists and relatives of those killed in the Nazi death camp of Sobibor in occupied Poland.
Mr Demjanjuk denies charges that he served in the camp and helped gas 27,900 Jewish prisoners as a so-called Trawniki, a Russian prisoner of war trained to serve as a camp guard by the SS.
Stripped of his US citizenship and extradited to Germany in May, Mr Demjanjuk declined to speak in court yesterday.
Listening to a translator with his eyes closed, he mouthed only a few inaudible words to his defence lawyer, Dr Ulrich Busch.
In a last-ditch effort yesterday, Dr Busch failed to halt the trial, but made sure the prosecution never got as far as reading the charge sheet.
Dr Busch claimed the German courts were biased for pursuing former Nazi “slaves” after failing to pursue consequentially the Sobibor commanders.
“Whoever wants to come to terms with one’s past has to take an unsparing approach to one’s own people and only then pursue people treated as subhuman by the Germans,” said Dr Busch.
But his attempt to present Mr Demjanjuk as a Nazi victim was attacked by co-prosecution lawyers representing camp survivors and families. As one pointed out: “The Trawniki murdered, Jews did not.”
The high farce began after lunch when Mr Demjanjuk was again wheeled in, this time on a stretcher, covered by blankets and with his back to the court.
After complaints from prosecutors, he was wheeled out again and given a painkiller. On his return – on his back, staring at the ceiling – his defence lawyer argued he was medically unfit for trial.
The accused suffers lingering pain from wartime injuries, gout, a heart murmur and a bone marrow condition.
After at least six medical examinations and four blood transfusions since May, court-appointed doctors said they were satisfied Mr Demjanjuk’s complaints were treatable, not life-threatening and that the defendant was capable of standing trial.
In a concession to his ailments and advanced age, however, they recommended a maximum of three hours’ testimony daily. The trial is likely to continue until May.
Nazi hunters welcomed yesterday’s trial as an indication of new energy in German prosecutions against suspected Nazi war criminals. “It’s a very positive development because, until now, only German officers were pursued, if at all,” said Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israeli office. “This case is a corrective for the many people who never faced justice.”