Expert tells German court Demjanjuk ID used as main evidence appears authentic

Expert: Demjanjuk ID appears authentic

MUNICH — A Nazi-issued identity card being used as key evidence in the prosecution case against John Demjanjuk appears to be original, an expert testified on Wednesday.

The typeset and handwriting on the card matches with that used on four other cards believed to have been issued at the SS training camp at Trawniki, Anton Dallmayer testified at the Munich state court Wednesday.

Retired Ohio autoworker Demjanjuk is standing trial on 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder on allegations he was a guard at the Nazis’ Sobibor camp in occupied Poland during World War II.

Demjanjuk denies ever being at any camp, claiming he is the victim of mistaken identity. The Ukrainian-born 90-year-old could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

Dallmayer, from the Bavarian Bureau of Criminal Investigation, said that his examination shows the ID cards were issued by the same person, using the same paper, and were printed on the same machine. He added, however, that he could not confirm the IDs had been made during World War II.

Demjanjuk’s attorney Ulrich Busch said that all four ID cards could be fake and comparing them therefore had no point.

The defense maintains the Nazi ID card showing Demjanjuk served time in Sobibor is a fake made by the KGB.

The prosecution argues that after Demjanjuk, a Soviet Red Army soldier, was captured by the Germans in 1942, he volunteered to serve under the SS as a guard.

Demjanjuk claims he spent most of the rest of the war in Nazi camps for prisoners of war before joining the so-called Vlasov Army of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others. That army was formed to fight with the Germans against the encroaching Soviets in the final months of the war.

As in previous sessions, Demjanjuk lay on a hospital bed in the courtroom wearing sunglasses and did not react to the testimony.

On Tuesday, Demjanjuk told the court in his first major statement since his trial began last November that he himself was a victim of World War II.

He said that as a prisoner of war the Nazis used him as a slave laborer, while killing millions of his fellow Ukrainians. Since his extradition from the U.S. last May, Demjanjuk has been in a prison near Munich, again “as a German prisoner of war,” he said.

The trial is scheduled to continue Thursday.