MUNICH — John Demjanjuk sat in a wheelchair wrapped in a light blue blanket, his eyes closed and his face pale as his trial opened Monday on charges he helped kill 27,900 Jews as a Nazi death camp guard.
Lawyers for the retired Ohio autoworker portrayed him as a victim — of the Nazis and misguided German justice. But three German doctors testified the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was fit to stand trial.
Demjanjuk, 89, was wheeled in to the packed Munich state court and did not answer when presiding judge Ralph Alt asked whether he could answer basic questions about himself. His left hand twitched occasionally, and his mouth was open slightly as if he was in pain.
A German doctor who examined Demjanjuk two hours before the trial began said that despite suffering from a bone marrow disease and other ailments, he was able to face trial.
“He lies there, keeps his eyes closed, but understands everything,” said Dr. Albrecht Stein.
Demjanjuk’s family disputed that.
“Given his now confirmed grave medical condition and his resulting inability to fully defend himself, it is farcical for anyone to say he is fit for trial and malpractice for any doctor to recommend it,” said his son, John Demjanjuk Jr., in an e-mail sent from Ohio.
Demjanjuk was deported in May from the United States and has been in custody in Munich since then. He could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted of training as a guard in the Trawniki SS camp, then serving in the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
The prosecution argues that after Demjanjuk, a Soviet Red Army soldier, was captured by the Germans in 1942, he volunteered to serve under the SS as a guard.
Demjanjuk has denied that, saying he spent most of the rest of the war in Nazi POW camps before joining the Vlasov army made up of Soviet POWs and other anti-communists to fight with the Germans against the Soviets in the final months of World War II. Ulrich Busch, one of Demjanjuk’s two lawyers, told the court that the Ukrainians who did volunteer to serve as guards did so to save themselves, noting that millions of Soviet POWs died at the hands of the Nazis.
The trial comes after 30 years of legal action against Demjanjuk on three continents.
