BERLIN (JTA) — The war crimes trial of John Demjanjuk will begin Nov. 30 in Munich, the state court announced.
Demjanjuk, 89, is charged with being an accessory in the murder of 27,900 people in the Nazi death camp Sobibor. If convicted, he could face a prison sentence of up to 15 years.
The trial is expected to end in May. Demjanjuk has denied the charges and said he was a Soviet prisoner of war in a German camp.
In 2002, the U.S. Justice Department charged Demjanjuk with being a guard at Sobibor and revoked his citizenship for lying about his Nazi past in order to gain citizenship. He was extradited to Germany in May.
In the early 1980s, Demjanjuk was accused of being the notorious guard "Ivan the Terrible" at the Treblinka death camp. He was deported to Israel in 1986 and sentenced to death in 1988. But the Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1993 after finding reasonable doubt that he was the guard in question.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
