German court convicts then frees Nazi guard Demjanjuk

91-year-old sentenced to 5 years but let out due to age; Demjanjuk convicted for killing 27,900 as guard at death camp Sobibor.

By REUTERS, JPOST.COM STAFF
John Demjanjuk 311 (R) (photo credit: REUTERS/Lukas Barth/Pool)
John Demjanjuk 311 (R)
(photo credit: REUTERS/Lukas Barth/Pool)
MUNICH - A German court convicted John Demjanjuk on Thursday for his role in the killing of 27,900 Jews in the Sobibor Nazi death camp during the Holocaust, then set the 91-year-old free because of his age.
Ralph Alt said he was released because there's no expectation he's going to flee the country, German media said.
RELATED:Holocaust justice: The final chapter'Soviet Union likely forged evidence in Demjanjuk trial'
Holocaust survivors welcomed the Munich court's verdict that Demjanjuk, who was exonerated in another war crimes case in Israel two decades ago, was an accessory to mass murder as a guard at Sobibor camp in Poland during World War Two.
Demjanjuk showed no reaction while Judge Ralph Alt delivered the five-year jail sentence, and then said he would be released.
Alt said guards played an important role at extermination camps like Sobibor, where at least 250,000 Jews are thought to have been killed despite only 20 German SS officers being there.
"He knew from the beginning exactly what was going on in the camp," Alt said.
Demjanjuk was initially sentenced to death two decades ago in Israel for being the notorious "Ivan the Terrible" camp guard at Treblinka in Poland. The ruling was overturned by Israel's supreme court after new evidence exonerated him.
Ukraine-born Demjanjuk has been in a German jail since he was extradited from the United States two years ago and his lawyers had sought his release on age and health grounds.
He attended the 18-month court proceedings in Munich -- birthplace of Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement -- in a wheelchair and sometimes lying down.
"For us the important thing is that he got convicted," World Jewish Congress spokesman Michael Thaidigsmann said. "It's not up to an organization like us to say whether he should be in jail or not."
Stephan J. Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told Reuters that the verdict was "not revenge but the execution of justice, even 65 years later".
Vera Dejong, whose family were Sobibor victims, said she was "very much relieved I don't have to have all the stress every time I have to come and sit here and hear all the horrible things that happened during the war and to my family".
Demjanjuk, who was once top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals, said he was drafted into the Soviet army in 1941 then taken prisoner of war by the Germans.
His son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said in an e-mail before the verdict that his father was a victim of the Nazis and of post-war Germany.
"While those who refuse to accept that reality may take satisfaction from this event, nothing the Munich court can do will atone for the suffering Germany has perpetrated upon him to this day," he said.
Prosecutors had faced several hurdles in proving Demjanjuk's guilt, with no surviving witnesses to his crimes and heavy reliance on wartime documents, namely a Nazi ID card that defense attorneys said was a fake made by the Soviets.
Guards at Nazi death camps like Sobibor were essential to the mass killing of Jews because extermination was the focus of such camps, prosecutors said.
Defence attorney Ulrich Busch told the court that even if Demjanjuk did become a prison guard, he did so only because as a prisoner of war he would have either been shot by the Nazis or died of starvation.
Demjanjuk emigrated to the United States in the early 1950s and became a naturalized citizen in 1958, working as an engine mechanic in Ohio.