(Los Angeles Times) Henry Chu - John Demjanjuk, convicted in Germany in 2011 of serving as a guard at a Nazi extermination camp and being complicit in the deaths of more than 28,000 people, died Saturday. In 1977, information passed to U.S. officials suggested that he was "Ivan the Terrible," a sadistic sentry at the Treblinka extermination camp in German-occupied Poland, where an estimated 800,000 prisoners were put to death. The U.S. stripped Demjanjuk of his citizenship and ordered him extradited to Israel to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Forensic experts confirmed as genuine the ID card, unearthed in Soviet archives, attesting to his service as a Nazi guard. Demjanjuk was found guilty and sentenced to death in April 1988. But five years later, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the verdict on appeal.
2012-03-19 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive