Nazi camp guard convicted accessory to 28,060 murders

MUNICH – A German court convicted retired U.S. autoworker John Demjanjuk on Thursday of taking part in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews as a Nazi death camp guard, breaking legal ground that could pave the way for the prosecution of many low-level cogs in Hitler’s machinery of destruction.

The 91-year-old Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years in prison on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder – one each for the number of people killed at the Sobibor death camp during the six months in 1943 when he was convicted of standing guard there.

But Demjanjuk will spend no immediate time behind bars. Presiding Judge Ralph Alt ordered him released from custody pending his appeal – a process that could take at least a year. It was not immediately clear when Demjanjuk would be released or where he would go.

The case was considered groundbreaking because although scores of Nazi war criminals have been tried and convicted in Germany, in this case there was no evidence that Demjanjuk committed a specific crime.

His prosecution was based on the theory that if Demjanjuk was at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, he was a participant in the killing there – the first time such a legal argument has been made in German courts.

Alt said Demjanjuk did not pose a flight risk because of his age, poor health and the fact that he is stateless after being deported from the U.S. two years ago.

Integral to the prosecution’s case was an SS identity card that allegedly shows a picture of a young Demjanjuk and indicates he trained at the SS Trawniki camp and was posted to Sobibor. Though court experts said the card appears genuine, the defense maintains it is a fake produced by the Soviet KGB.