SS Man Charged with 58 Murders

[Oski]

German prosecutors have charged a 90-year-old alleged former Nazi SS member with the killing of 58 Jewish forced labourers, officials say.

The man is accused of murdering the Hungarian workers in Deutsch Schuetzen, a village in eastern Austria, at the end of World War II.

The court has identified the suspect only as a "retiree from Duisburg".

The victims' remains were found in a mass grave in 1995 by the Austrian Jewish association.

The German state court was told that on 29 March 1945, the accused and accomplices brought at least 57 Jewish forced labourers to a forest "where they had to give up their valuables and kneel by a grave".

"The accused and other SS members then cruelly shot the Jewish forced labourers from behind," a prosecution spokesman said.

Forced march

The 90-year-old man is also accused of shooting another Jew who could no longer walk during a forced march on the same day or the day after, the court was told.

The victims' mass grave is now marked by a plaque.

Prosecutors began investigating the case last year when they were alerted by an Austrian university student who had been researching the massacre.

Prosecutor Andreas Brendel told the Associated Press news agency that three former members of the Hitler Youth had provided testimony in Austria.

A fourth former Hitler Youth member, now living in Canada, is being interviewed this week, he said.

A court in Duisburg now has to decide whether the trial of the man can go ahead. The defendant has two weeks to present evidence or to appeal against the case proceeding.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8364447.stm

[SaxonPagan]

I sometimes wonder how many of these "ex-Nazi" cases are for real and how many of these stories appear in the press just to keep alive the memory of how the Jews (alone!) suffered in WW2.

[frippardthree]

I sometimes wonder how many of these "ex-Nazi" cases are for real and how many of these stories appear in the press just to keep alive the memory of how the Jews (alone!) suffered in WW2.

Many of them are likely to be cases of mistaken identity, such as the case of John Demjanjuk of Cleveland, Ohio.

Suspected Nazi war criminal deported
John Demjanjuk of Ohio accused of being a guard at Sobibor death camp
By M.R. KROPKO, Associated Press
First published in print: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 CLEVELAND — Federal agents carrying John Demjanjuk in a wheelchair put him on a small jet Monday to be deported to Germany, where the retired autoworker is accused of being a Nazi death camp guard in World War II.

Demjanjuk, 89, arrived in an ambulance at Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport after spending several hours with U.S. immigration officials at a downtown federal building. Airport commissioner Khalid Bahhur confirmed Demjanjuk was on the plane and that its destination is Germany.

The deportation came four days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider Demjanjuk's request to block deportation and about 31/2 years after he was last ordered deported.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk is wanted on a Munich arrest warrant that accuses him of 29,000 counts of accessory to murder as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The legal case spanned three decades.

A German Justice Ministry spokesman, Ulrich Staudigl, said the retired autoworker was expected to be in Germany by today.

Demjanjuk denies Germany's accusations, saying he was held by the Germans as a Soviet prisoner of war and was never a camp guard. Demjanjuk's family fought deportation, arguing he is in poor health and might not survive the trans-Atlantic journey.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/ASPStories...#ixzz0X9RwbROD

John Demjanjuk, born Ivan Mykolayevych Demyanyuk born April 3, 1920; in Dubovi Makharyntsi, Ukraine) is a retired auto worker and former United States citizen, who gained notoriety after being accused of war crimes.

Born in the Ukraine during the Polish–Soviet War (when territories in Ukraine quickly changed hands), Demjanjuk migrated to the United States in 1951. He was deported to Israel in 1986 and later sentenced to death there in 1988 for war crimes, based on his identification by Israeli Holocaust survivors as "Ivan the Terrible," a notorious SS guard at the Treblinka and Sobibor extermination camps during the period 1942–1943 who committed murder and acts of extraordinarily savage violence against camp prisoners. His conviction for crimes against humanity was later overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993 due to a finding of reasonable doubt based on evidence suggesting that Demjanjuk was not "Ivan the Terrible" and had, in fact, been a guard at camps besides the one at Treblinka.[3] After the trial, he was returned to Cleveland, Ohio. He eventually moved to nearby Seven Hills, Ohio.

More:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk

Feds release accused Nazi prison guard DemjanjukBy M.R. KROPKO, Associated Press Writer M.r. Kropko, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 15 mins ago
CLEVELAND – John Demjanjuk was released from federal custody Tuesday evening, just hours after six immigration officers removed the accused Nazi death camp guard from his suburban home in a wheelchair, authorities said. Federal officials had taken Demjanjuk to a federal building in downtown Cleveland, but the 89-year-old retired autoworker's impending return to Germany was halted when three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of deportation.

An arrest warrant in Germany claims Demjanjuk was an accessory to some 29,000 deaths during World War II at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Once in Germany, he could be formally charged in court.

Demjanjuk was driven to his home in Seven Hills after his release, former son-in-law and family spokesman Ed Nishnic said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement they'll supervise him through electronic monitoring.

In granting the stay, the three-judge panel said it would further consider Demjanjuk's motion to reopen the U.S. case that ordered the deportation, in which he says painful medical ailments would make travel to Germany torturous.

Citing the need to act because of the possibility of Demjanjuk's imminent deportation, the court issued the stay without addressing the U.S. government's argument that the court had no jurisdiction to rule on Demjanjuk's appeal.

The government planned to continue its legal battle in court, said Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney.

Nishnic said the family was relieved the stay was granted.

Full Article:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/demjanjuk/print

I can remember when he was initially deported about 25 years ago, when I was in junior high school. It was all over the news then. I thought they had the wrong guy then, and I still think they have the wrong guy now.