GERMANY: Forced by a change in legal practice after John Demjanjuk's conviction, Germany reopens investigation into hundreds of Nazi files

Record ID: 723403

  • Title: GERMANY: Forced by a change in legal practice after John Demjanjuk's conviction, Germany reopens investigation into hundreds of Nazi files
  • Date: 8th October 2011
  • Summary: SLATE INFORMATION
  • Embargoed: 23rd October 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Germany, Germany
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: History
  • Reuters ID: LVAB4Z4KTFFEG5XDVM2A2Q64LUV1
  • Story Text: The conviction earlier this year of retired U.S. autoworker John Demjanjuk at a Munich court forced German authorities to reopen investigations into hundreds of Nazi files.
    The court convicted Demjanjuk in May for his role in the killing of 28,000 Jews in the Sobibor Nazi death camp, then set the 91-year-old free because of his age.
    On Friday (October 07), the head of the Ludwigsburg branch of Germany's federal archives said that although the Ukraine-born Demjanjuk "was never German and although the crimes he was accused of did not happen on German soil," there had been a change in legal practice.
    Prosecuting attorney and head of the Ludwigsburg archives Kurt Schrimm told Reuters Television that his authority was forced to investigate "similar cases again, based on article 3 of the constitution which says that everyone needs be treated equally."
    "We are an authority to investigate and clear up Nazi crimes, not to persecute them," Schrimm said.
    "That will be the task of the state attorney, to decide whether the man or the men are still able to stand trial or not. Our task is first of all to shed light on the cases in order to tell the public what happened."
    Schrimm explained that "our main focus is on the so called extermination camps. We will initially ignore the concentration camps, which were at the same time labour camps because evidence would be very, very difficult."
    He underlined the importance of so called "task forces" which worked at the camps, adding that "it must be said that we are a little sceptical since these task forces consisted of people who already at the time were of a certain age. So the hope that a lot of them are still alive is relatively small."
    Demjanjuk was initially sentenced to death two decades ago in Israel for being the notorious "Ivan the Terrible" camp guard at Treblinka in Poland. The guilty verdict was overturned on appeal by Israel's supreme court in 1993 after new evidence emerged pointing to a case of mistaken identity.
    Demjanjuk had been in a German jail since he was extradited from the United States two years ago and his lawyers had sought his release on age and health grounds.
    He attended the 18-month court proceedings in Munich -- the birthplace of Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement -- in a wheelchair, and sometimes lying down. He denied the charges but otherwise did not speak at his trial.
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