Ex-Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk died on March 17, 2012. Picture: Christof Stache / AFP
JOHN Demjanjuk, a retired US 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 today, his son told The Associated Press. He was 91.
Despite being convicted in May of 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder and sentenced to five years in prison, Demjanjuk died a free man in a nursing home in the southern Bavarian town of Bad Feilnbach, after being released pending his appeal.
John Demjanjuk Jr. said in a telephone interview from Ohio that his father died in the night 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 US for burial.
Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk 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.
Despite his conviction, his family never gave up its battle to have his US citizenship reinstated so that he could live out his final days nearby them in the Cleveland area. Their argument hinged largely on the fact 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 US 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.
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