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DEPORTED.. TO ANSWER FOR HOLOCAUST DEATHS; Demjanjuk faces war crime trial.


Byline: ANTON ANTONOWICZ

NAZI war crime suspect John Demjanjuk was in a German prison yesterday after being deported to stand trial.

The frail 89-year-old - said to be suffering from bone marrow and kidney diseases - was flown in from the US and was taken from Munich airport by ambulance to the jail.

A medical team will now decide whether Ukrainian Demjanjuk is fit to face trial over the deaths of 29,000 Holocaust victims.

If he is, he will be charged with helping to murder Jewish prisoners while a guard at the Nazis' Sobibor death camp.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center This article is currently semi-protected to prevent sock puppets of currently blocked or banned users from editing it.  that spearheads the hunt for war criminals, praised America and Germany for refusing to let Demjanjuk dodge the legal process.

He said: "I think this is an extremely important day for justice. It reinforces the message that the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the murderers."

Charlotte Knobloch, president of Germany's Central Council of Jews, said: "All living Nazi war criminals should know there can be no mercy for them, regardless of their age." Demjanjuk denies being a camp guard and claims he was captured by the Germans while fighting for the Soviets.

He insists he spent most of the Second World War as a prisoner of the Third Reich.

But prosecutors claim they have documentary evidence of his Nazi past. Demjanjuk was deported after US judges rejected his claim that he was too ill to travel.

Immigration immigration, entrance of a person (an alien) into a new country for the purpose of establishing permanent residence. Motives for immigration, like those for migration generally, are often economic, although religious or political factors may be very important.  officials escorted Demjanjuk from his home in Seven Hills, Ohio Seven Hills is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. The population was 12,080 at the 2000 census. The city's chief claim to fame is its status as the onetime residence of "former Seven Hills autoworker" and sometime death camp guard/deportee/Israeli convict John , and put him on a plane in Cleveland. Demjanjuk arrived in the US in 1952 as a refugee. He worked in the car industry.

In 1988, he stood trial in Israel and was found guilty of war crimes after Holocaust survivors identified him as a sadistic sa·dism  
n.
1. The deriving of sexual gratification or the tendency to derive sexual gratification from inflicting pain or emotional abuse on others.

2. The deriving of pleasure, or the tendency to derive pleasure, from cruelty.
 guard at Treblinka camp known as Ivan the Terrible Ivan the Terrible: see Ivan IV.

Ivan the Terrible

(1533–1584) his reign was characterized by murder and terror. [Russ. Hist.: EB, 9: 1179–1180]

See : Ruthlessness
.

Israeli judges later overturned his sentence after Soviet documents indicated that Ivan had probably been a different man.

He returned to the US but soon faced further accusations linked to Sobibor in Poland.

Demjanjuk is in Stadelheim jail, where Hitler was held after a failed 1922 coup attempt.

250,000

victims were murdered in 18 months at the Sobibor death camp where Demjanjuk was allegedly a guard

CAPTION(S):

DENIALS Demjanjuk GUARD OR PRISONER? Demjanjuk during war SICKLY Demjanjuk heads for German prison yesterday
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Publication:The Mirror (London, England)
Date:May 13, 2009
Words:394
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