Accused Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk arrived from the United States on Tuesday to face charges he helped kill 29,000 Jews in 1943, and what is likely to be Germany's last major Nazi trial. Police cars and ambulances surrounded his plane when it landed at Munich airport in southern Germany.
After a medical examination the 89-year-old was whisked off to Stadelheim jail, where Hitler was held after a failed 1922 coup attempt. Pictures showed Demjanjuk lying in an ambulance wearing a baseball cap, with tubes coming out of his nose.
Demjanjuk tops the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of its 10 most-wanted suspected war criminals. Munich prosecutors want him tried for assisting in the murders at Sobibor extermination camp, in what is now Poland. The Wiesenthal Center says Demjanjuk pushed men, women and children into gas chambers. Germany's Central Council of Jews welcomed the deportation.
"All living Nazi war criminals should know there can be no mercy for them, regardless of their age," said the Council's President Charlotte Knobloch in a statement. Demjanjuk, born in Ukraine, has denied any role in the Holocaust and a court could decide he is unfit to stand trial. More than 60 years after World War Two, there is little appetite for a new Nazi trial among Germans.
Many feel a duty to pursue Nazi perpetrators, but there is also a desire, especially among the young, to draw a line under the past. The transfer marks the end of a long legal battle for the retired US auto worker. "The removal ... of John Demjanjuk is a historic moment in the federal government's efforts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice," said US Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer.
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