German investigator: Demjanjuk had inconsistent statements about his whereabouts during WWII

Witness: Demjanjuk’s statements inconsistent

MUNICH — A top German investigator testified Tuesday that John Demjanjuk has given conflicting stories about where he spent the rest of World War II after being captured by the Germans in 1942.

Thomas Walther, who led the investigation that prompted Germany to prosecute Demjanjuk on 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder, disputed some of the 89-year-old’s statements about where he was after being seized.

Demjanjuk, a Red Army draftee from Ukraine, is accused of agreeing to serve the Nazis as a guard at their Sobibor death camp after his capture. Demjanjuk maintains he never served in any Nazi death camp, and no witnesses have been able to identify Demjanjuk from Sobibor.

Walther testified, however, that in investigations against the retired Ohio autoworker in Israel and the United States, Demjanjuk gave conflicting testimony about his whereabouts, with some of it “being historically impossible.”

He testified that Demjanjuk once claimed to have served with the Ukrainian Liberation Army — formed by the Germans to fight the Soviets — in Graz, Austria in 1943.

“This army at that time was at no point in Graz,” Walther, who has now retired from the special German prosecutors’ office responsible for investigating Nazi-era crimes, told the Munich state court.

Demjanjuk’s attorney Ulrich Busch called Walther’s testimony “completely unproductive,” saying documents do not necessarily prove anything.

“You need actual witnesses, not documents,” he told The Associated Press.

But Busch acknowledged that Demjanjuk has given conflicting accounts in the past.

“Everyone from the Soviet Union had to make up stories for not being deported” back home, Busch said. “Their accounts can never be taken as evidence for anything.”

Demjanjuk was brought into the court on a wheelchair Tuesday before lying down in a bed next to the judge’s bench. He did not show any reaction to the testimony.

Demjanjuk claims to be a victim of mistaken identity, saying he was a Red Army conscript from Ukraine who was captured in Crimea in 1942 and held prisoner until joining the Vlasov Army. That force of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others was formed to fight with the Germans against the Soviets in the final months of the war.

Walther testified that in previous statements to Israeli and U.S. authorities, Demjanjuk has had several other accounts.

“For one specific time period, there are three places where he claims to have been,” Walther testified.

Demjanjuk had his U.S. citizenship revoked in 1981 after the U.S. 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 returned to the United States and was deported to Germany last year.

His son, John Demjanjuk Jr., told the AP that if anybody’s story should be questioned, it is the prosecutors’.

“Over the past 30 years of allegations, it is the prosecutors’ story that has changed multiple times and been proven fraudulent by U.S. Courts,” he said.

The trial continues Wednesday.