Suspect Faces Second Nazi Trial
2009-11-30 12:45
89-year-old John Demjanjuk — suspected Nazi war criminal as he was in May after being extradited from America to Germany. On Monday his trial begins in Munich.
This is where Demjanjuk is accused of helping to murder Jews. Sobibor extermination camp in Poland.
Prosecutors will give details of how at least a quarter of million Jews were killed with a deadly mix of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. They believe Demjanjuk helped push victims into the gas chambers.
Relatives of those who died in Sobibor say Demjanjuk must face justice.
Kurt Gutmann's mother and eldest brother died in the gas chambers in 1943. He'll be acting as joint plaintiff in the Munich trial.
[Kurt Gutmann, Joint Plaintiff]:
"I will for the first time have the chance to assist in bringing to justice one of the alleged participants in the murder of my mother and my eldest brother."
Monday's hearing in this court house won't be the first time Demjanjuk has stood trial on Nazi war crimes.
In the 1980's he was convicted and sentenced to death in Israel accused of being Ivan The Terrible - a notoriously sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp.
But Israel's Supreme Court later overturned the conviction. He was freed and returned to America.
Demjanjuk will deny any involvement in the Holocaust when the trial gets underway, but it might not even get to that,
The court could well decide that at 89 years old and suffering from bouts of dementia, John Demjanjuk is not fit to stand trial.
