Convicted Nazi criminal John Demjanjuk dies at 91, German police say
BERLIN – John Demjanjuk, a retired U.S. autoworker who was convicted of being a guard at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp despite steadfastly maintaining over three decades of legal battles that he had been mistaken for someone else, died Saturday, his son told The Associated Press. He was 91.
Demjanjuk, convicted in May of 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder and sentenced to five years in prison, died a free man in a nursing home in the southern Bavarian town of Bad Feilnbach. He had been released pending his appeal.
John Demjanjuk Jr. said in a telephone interview from Ohio that his father died of natural causes. Demjanjuk had terminal bone marrow disease, chronic kidney disease and other ailments.
It was not yet known whether he would be brought back to the U.S. for burial.
Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk (dehm-YAHN’-yook) had steadfastly denied any involvement in the Nazi Holocaust since the first accusations were levied against him more than 30 years ago.
“My father fell asleep with the Lord as a victim and survivor of Soviet and German brutality since childhood,” Demjanjuk Jr. said. “He loved life, family and humanity. History will show Germany used him as a scapegoat to blame helpless Ukrainian POWs for the deeds of Nazi Germans.”
His conviction helped set new German legal precedent, being the first time someone was convicted solely on the basis of serving as a camp guard, with no evidence of being involved in a specific killing.
Presiding Judge Ralph Alt said the evidence showed Demjanjuk was a piece of the Nazis’ “machinery of destruction.”
“The court is convinced that the defendant … served as a guard at Sobibor” from March 27, 1943, until mid-September 1943, Alt said in his ruling.
Israeli Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer, who researches at the Yad Vashem memorial, said Demjanjuk’s story showed an important moral lesson.
“You don’t let people, even if they were only junior staff, get away from responsibility,” Bauer said.
Despite his conviction, his family never gave up its battle to have his U.S. citizenship reinstated so that he could live out his final days nearby them in the Cleveland area. One of their main arguments was that the defense had never seen a 1985 FBI document, uncovered in early 2011 by The Associated Press, calling into question the authenticity of a Nazi ID card used against him.
Demjanjuk maintained that he was a victim of the Nazis himself — first wounded as a Soviet soldier fighting German forces, then captured and held as a prisoner of war under brutal conditions.
“I am again and again an innocent victim of the Germans,” he told the panel of Munich state court judges during his 18-month trial, in a statement he signed and that was read aloud by his attorney Ulrich Busch.
He said after the war he was unable to return to his homeland, and that taking him away from his family in the U.S. to stand trial in Germany was a “continuation of the injustice” done to him.
“Germany is responsible for the fact that I have lost for good my whole reason to live, my family, my happiness, any future and hope,” he said.
His claims of mistaken identity gained credence after he successfully defended himself against accusations initially brought in 1977 by the U.S. Justice Department that he was “Ivan the Terrible” — a notoriously brutal guard at the Treblinka extermination camp.
In connection with the allegation, he was extradited to Israel from the U.S. in 1986 to stand trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, convicted and sentenced to death. But the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993 overturned the verdict on appeal, saying that evidence showed another Ukrainian man was actually “Ivan the Terrible,” and ordered him returned to the U.S.
The Israeli judges said, however, they still believed Demjanjuk had served the Nazis, probably at the Trawniki SS training camp and Sobibor. But they declined to order a new trial, saying there was a risk of violating the law prohibiting trying someone twice on the same evidence.
Demjanjuk returned to his suburban Cleveland home in 1993 and his U.S. citizenship, which had been revoked in 1981, was reinstated in 1998.
Demjanjuk remained under investigation in the U.S., where a judge revoked his citizenship again in 2002 based on Justice Department evidence suggesting he concealed his service at Sobibor. Appeals failed, and the nation’s chief immigration judge ruled in 2005 that Demjanjuk could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine.
Prosecutors in Germany filed charges in 2009, saying Demjanjuk’s link to Sobibor and Trawniki was clear, with evidence showing that after he was captured by the Germans he volunteered to serve with the fanatical SS and trained as a camp guard.
Though there are no known witnesses who remember Demjanjuk from Sobibor, prosecutors referred to an SS identity card that they said features a photo of a young, round-faced Demjanjuk and that says he worked at the death camp. That and other evidence indicating Demjanjuk had served under the SS convinced the panel of judges in Munich, and led to his conviction.
He was ordered tried in Munich because he lived in the area briefly after the war.
Demjanjuk, who was removed by U.S. immigration agents from his home in suburban Cleveland and deported in May 2009, questioned the evidence in the German case, saying the identity card was possibly a Soviet postwar forgery.
He reiterated his contention that after he was captured in Crimea in 1942, he was held prisoner until joining the Vlasov Army — a force of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others formed to fight with the Germans against the Soviets in the final months of the war.
Demjanjuk was born April 3, 1920, in the village of Dubovi Makharintsi in central Ukraine, two years before the country became part of the Soviet Union. He grew up during a time when the country was wracked by famines that killed millions, and a wave of purges instituted by Stalin to eliminate any possible opposition.
As a young man Demjanjuk worked as a tractor driver for the area’s collective farm. After being called up for the Soviet Red Army, he was wounded in action but sent back to the front after he had recovered, only to be captured during the battle of Kerch Peninsula in May 1942.
After the war, Demjanjuk was sent to a displaced persons camp and worked briefly as a driver for the U.S. Army. In 1950, he sought U.S. citizenship, claiming to have been a farmer in Sobibor, Poland, during the war.
Demjanjuk later said he lied about his wartime activities to avoid being sent back to Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union. Just to have admitted being in the Vlasov Army would also have been enough to have him barred from emigration to the U.S. or many other countries.
He came to the U.S. on Feb. 9, 1952, and eventually settled in Seven Hills, a middle-class suburb of Cleveland.
He was a mechanic at Ford Motor Co.’s engine plant in the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park and with his wife, Vera, raised three children — son John Jr. and daughters Irene and Lydia.
Posts Tagged ‘World War II’
Convicted Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk, stripped of US citizenship and deported, dies at 91
by Bob in Breckenridge ( 31 Comments › )Filed under Breaking News, Crime, Headlines, History, Military, World War II at March 17th, 2012 - 4:20 pm
70 years ago today – Operation Barbarossa – The Greatest War Ever Fought
by Mojambo ( 356 Comments › )Filed under Communism, History, Progressives, World War II at June 22nd, 2011 - 8:00 pm
All we have to do is kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come tumbling down
Adolf Hitler, Spring 1941
On Sunday morning, June 22, 1941 at 3:15 a.m., the greatest war ever fought began. Over 3 million German soldiers (later augmented by contingents of Finns, Hungarians, Romanians, and Italians) on an 1,800 mile front, burst into the Soviet Union. (Ominously enough June 22 was the date in which Napoleon attacked Russia in 1812.) The intention was not just to take territory and natural resources, but to physically liquidate a nation and its people. Adolf Hitler had always feared and hated communism and in Mein Kampf he made plain his plans of a war of annihilation against the U.S.S.R (called “Operation Barbarossa“, named after a red bearded German (Frederick Barbarossa) crusading monarch of the 12th century). Hitler’s pact with Stalin in August 1939 when they agreed to divide up Poland, followed by his conquest of Western Europe put his plans on hold but he always wanted to settle the score with the Bolsheviks (whom he also identified as Jews). The German armed forces had 150 divisions, 3,600 tanks, 4,400 aircraft and 46,000 artillery pieces at their disposal. The Soviet armies had almost 5, 500,000 men, 15,000 tanks and 11,000 aircraft.
German aircraft attacked Soviet airfields and within a matter of a few days, pretty much destroyed the Red Air Force on the ground. Three massive German Army Groups (North, Center, and South) headed for their objectives which were Leningrad, Moscow and the wheat fields of the Ukraine and the oilfields of the Caucasus respectively. The Soviets despite being given ample warnings by British and other intelligence services were taken by surprise. The German panzers struck deep within the USSR and within a fortnight had encircled vast numbers of Soviet soldiers in a pocket around Minsk (eventually capturing 300,000 of them). In the North the Germans quickly over ran the Baltic states and headed for Leningrad. In the South, the Germans made slower progress as the Soviet forces there were better prepared and were resisting more fiercely.
Already despite the massive gains that the Germans were making, things were starting to go off course for them. First there were more Soviets then they had counted on. The German General command figured on 200 Soviet divisions and they had already counted by summer 1941 360 Red Army divisions. Secondly, the USSR was enormous and the Germans were having trouble supplying their men. The German Army still relied on the horse to move supplies as they did not have enough trucks. Third, Stalin was able to make this not into a war for the survival of communism but for the defense of the Russian motherland. This appealing to Russian patriotism rather than communist dogma played a key role in keeping the fighting spirit going. Fourth, after the savage purges of the Red Army in 1937-38, a new generation of talented Soviet generals was starting to emerge, lead by Georgi Zhukov. It was Zhukov who was sent to Leningrad to lead the defenses there (more Russians died during the 3-year siege of Leningrad then the combined war dead of Britain and the United States).
After mopping up the Bialystok-Minsk and Smolensk pockets (bagging a combined total of over 600,000 prisoners), Hitler despite the urgings of his generals did not launch an attack on Moscow. He decided to send Guderian’s Panzer Army south to help the Germans destroy the Soviet Southwestern Front and seize Kiev and the wheat fields of the Ukraine. On September 17, 1941 the two wings of the German panzer forces linked up and in effect destroyed the Soviet forces defending Kiev, killing or capturing almost 500,000 men. The Soviet Southwestern Front was virtually destroyed and had to be rebuilt. Army Group South pressed on and captured Kharkov. Yet Soviet resiliency in the face of such dreadful defeats was starting to amaze the Nazis and after the Germans captured Rostov in November 1941, for the first time the Soviets launched a well planned and well executed counterattack and liberated Rostov (an ominous portent of what was to happen in front of Moscow and later at Stalingrad). With Kiev captured the next major phase (which was intended to be the final one) of Barbarossa began – Operation Typhoon, the attack on Moscow. (Hitler was right to eliminate the Kiev pocket before attacking Moscow, as he could not afford such an enormous, well equipped, Soviet force to be on his southern flank). On Oct. 2., 1941 the Nazis launched their Moscow offense. Quickly they encircled two more pockets of Soviet troops at Vyazama and Bryansk killing or capturing another 500 -600,000 men. Yet the first snows started to fall around Moscow in early October. The German Army was not prepared for a winter campaign and their equipment did not have proper lubricants. More soldiers were casualties from frostbite then enemy action. On the day that the first snows fell around Moscow, their defenders received a new commander – Zhukov. A fact that German intelligence did not deem important enough to tell Hitler although Zhukov had been leading Leningrad’s defense with enormous energy.
The German Army however pushed on and took several towns near Moscow, yet Soviet resistance was increasing and finally Stalin was told by his spy in Tokyo that Japan had no intention of attacking the Soviet Union in the Far East. Therefore across the Trans-Siberian railroad, over 30 divisions of well trained, well equipped Soviet Far Eastern troops were sent to Moscow to be held in reserve for a counter attack. The German Army finally halted on December 5, 1941, however on that day Zhukov unleashed his Siberians in a ferocious counter attack lead by swarms of T-34 tanks and preceded by Katyusha rocket barrages. Eventually the Germans were pushed back 200 miles from Moscow and the fear was of another utter rout as that suffered by Napoleon’s Grand Armee in 1812, but the Soviets lacked the ability to utterly destroy Army Group Center. In the Southern Front the Soviets also halted the Germans on the Mius River line. A furious Hitler sacked all three Army Group commanders and took over command of the German Army personally. Another ominous note for Germany was that two days after the Moscow counteroffensive, Japan attacked Perl harbor and four days after that, Hitler declared war on America. So within 6 months in 1941 Hitler chose to go to war with three of the greatest industrial powers on earth.
Operation Barbarossa was a campaign of unimaginable brutality. Over 3 million Soviet prisoners were taken in 1941 alone and only 3% ever saw the Soviet Union again. Behind the lines the Germans ruthlessly shot partisans, civilians or anyone who opposed them. Einsatzgruppen squads shot hundreds of thousands of Jews in mass graves. Hitler considered Slavs to be subhuman and the term mercy was not in his vocabulary.
Barbarossa failed because it never had an “end game” strategy. Even had Moscow been taken, the Soviet resistance would have continued from Central Asia. Also Germany had no plans to win over the conquered populations, preferring to use them as slave labor. Their lack of motorized transport for a nation as vast as the USSR was another factor. The war continued for three more years and the next year Germany was able to make impressive gains in the South until their defeat at Stalingrad, but never again was Germany able to attack simultaneously on all fronts. The Soviet Union had suffered a disaster in 1941 (she had lost essentially three armies after suffering over 6 million casualties) which I doubt that any other nation could have suffered and survived, but she had not been defeated, and now she was allied with the British Empire and the United States. With the U.S.S.R.’s ast resources, and America and Britain’s industrial might, the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany now became inevitable.
 |
Operation Barbarossa – a detailed map
German soldiers battle the Russians after the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia.
Soviet prisoners being sent to the rear
Jews on their way out of the city of Kiev to the Babi Yar ravine pass corpses in the street.
December 1941. Soviet troops in winter gear, supported by tanks, counter-attack German forces.
Happy Hiroshima Day!
by Iron Fist ( 252 Comments › )Filed under Military, Nuclear Weapons, Patriotism, World War II at August 6th, 2010 - 2:00 pm
August 6, 1945. A day that, for the Left, will live in infamy. Happy Hiroshima Day! Today the World will mourn, the Left will castigate America for her sins, and Obama will no doubt make an act of contrition, but what is the truth about the bombing of Hiroshima? Was it a tragedy? For the Imperial Japanese, no doubt, and for the thousands who died as a result, but such are the fortunes of war. Was it a war crime? Hardly. Imperial Japan should know. They were, after all, masters of war crimes. As Americans, most of us are familiar with the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor that brought America into the war with Imperial Japan on December 7 1941, but the War in Asia had been raging for years when that happened. And that war saw true atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese. If today we are going to condemn America for the crime of using nuclear weapons on Imperial Japan, we should be very clear about what kind of nation Imperial Japan was.
Imperial Japan was a worthy ally for Nazi Germany. Like Nazi Germany, the Imperial Japanese believed in their own racial superiority. Living in a nation where there were no significant minorities to oppress and exterminate, Imperial Japan sought for such outside of her borders. Before Imperial Japan turned her guns on America, she had China in her sights. Japan’s invasion of China was brutal. Though China’s army was primitive, and poorly equipped, Japan’s victory was neither quick nor easy. The Chinese bravely resisted, but were defeated.
The Japanese were cruel victors. The set an example for China in their pacification and occupation of the capital of the Republic of China, Nanking (Nanjing). Historically, this operation is often called the Rape of Nanking, and rape it was. The Japanese Army systematically raped the women of the city. The actual count of women raped by the Japanese army is unknown, but estimates range from twenty to eighty thousand women. This was rape as a tool of intimidation. Rape as an instrument of control (as it often is) writ large as a policy of the Japanese army.
Such brutality was unfortunately merely part of the pacification effort. Slaughter was another tool applied with vigor and zest. Again, the exact toll will never be known. Unlike the Germans in their death camps, the Imperial Japanese did not keep meticulous records of the lives they snuffed out. Accounts vary from as low as “merely” 100,000 murdered (those would be Japanese estimates, who would have an interest in minimizing the atrocity) to estimates as high as three times that number.
The International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimates 260,000 casualties; China’s official estimate is 300,000 casualties, based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. Japanese historians estimate a lower death toll, in the vicinity of 100,000–200,000.
Source. It should be noted that the low estimate would put the death toll in line with that of the Hiroshima bombing, while the higher estimates would be greater than the combined death toll of both atomic bombings. Men, women, and children butchered individually or in small groups as part of an overall policy of extreme brutality designed to brutalize and intimidate a defeated foe.
So by all means, remember Hiroshima today, but understand it in its context. Are we not always told by the Left that we have to understand an events context to truly understand the event? The context of Hiroshima is not that of Pearl Harbor, an attack that while perhaps dishonorable in its implementation at least attacked military installations, facilities, and personnel. The context of Hiroshima is the Rape of Nanking, and measured against that great atrocity the bombing takes a more rational shape, as opposed to the hyperventilation’s about the bombing being done with an atomic weapon. It was, in the end, a necessary act of war, a feat of science and engineering, and a triumph of American arms. Celebrate Hiroshima Day, and Nagasaki Day to come, and remember the atrocities of the Japanese Empire that are so often glossed over in the rush to condemn “evil” America again and again.
Music video update from savage!
