Boston Globe | 16Jun2010 | Andrea M. Jarach (AP)
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2010/06/16/ex_nazi_camp_official_did_not_remember_demjanjuk/?camp=obinsite
Ex-Nazi camp official did not
remember Demjanjuk
MUNICH -- A former administrator in a Nazi SS training camp told
investigators [in 1987] that a camp ID card being used as evidence against John
Demjanjuk appeared genuine, but that he did not remember Demjanjuk
himself from the facility, according to evidence presented Wednesday [16Jun2010].
[W.Z. Why is
the Munich court allowing hearsay evidence from the Israeli prosecution
and the OSI, which perpetrated fraud on the court to obtain the
denaturalization of Mr. Demjanjuk in 1981 and his extradition to Israel
in 1986?]
Helmut Leonhardt, a former Cologne police officer who was sent to work
in Trawniki training camp's personnel office in 1942, told Israeli
investigators in 1987 that he recognized the SS officers' signatures on
the Trawniki ID card that prosecutors say belonged to Demjanjuk and
allegedly shows he has served time in the Sobibor death camp.
Demjanjuk denies having been in either camp, saying he is the victim of
mistaken identity. His defense team has argued that the ID card is a
Soviet fake.
The 90-year-old retired Ohio autoworker faces a possible 15 years in
prison if convicted in the Munich state court of 28,060 counts of
accessory to murder -- the number of people believed to have been
killed in Sobibor during the time when Demjanjuk was allegedly there.
In the interrogation in Cologne in 1987, conducted by German
authorities for Israeli investigators who were present, Leonhardt said
the ID cards were not made by his office. But, he said, the one that
prosecutors maintain belonged to Demjanjuk looked like others he had
seen.
Leonhardt, who the court said is now dead, acknowledged testifying in a
1968 trial that he knew nothing of the ID cards. But he said he had
only been shown a photocopy of the inside of the card then, and that in
1987 he had been shown photographs of the whole document.
[W.Z. Isn't
it strange that so many of the people interrogated in the Demjanjuk
case initially denied knowledge of the "evidence" that the OSI or
Israeli prosecutors wanted corroborated, but after a certain period of
"persuasion"and "suggestion" eventually "remember" the appropriate response.]
Still, he said, he could not testify whether Demjanjuk was ever at the
camp, saying there were thousands of guards trained there.
"The name Demjanjuk means nothing to me," he told investigators in 1987.
Demjanjuk had his U.S. citizenship revoked in 1981 after the Justice
Department alleged he hid his past as the notorious Treblinka guard
"Ivan the Terrible." He was extradited to Israel, where he was found
guilty and sentenced to death in 1988, only to have the conviction
overturned five years later as a case of mistaken identity.
He was deported to Germany in May 2009 from the U.S., and has been
standing trial since November 30, 2009 on allegations he was a guard at Sobibor,
a different camp in occupied Poland.
The court this week scheduled more dates for the trial, through Dec.
22, 2010.
http://www.timesreporter.com/news/x1311829725/Ex-Nazi-camp-official-did-not-remember-Demjanjuk