A former Nazi concentration camp guard’s claim of poor health did not stop the U.S. from ordering his deportation to Germany. John Demjanjuk lost his bid on Thursday to get the United States Supreme Court to stop his deportation to Germany, where an arrest warrant accuses him of 29,000 counts of accessory to murder during the Second World War as a Nazi concentration-camp guard.
Demjanjuk (pronounced dem-YAHN'-yook) stated over a month ago that his health condition is deteriorating and his expulsion would be inappropriate and embarrassing. Demjanjuk’s son stated that his father is suffering from a chronic kidney disease. Demjanjuk is scheduled to be arrested and taken to prison or a prison hospital when he arrives in Munich.
The 89-year-old Ukrainian native is being deported because he lied about his past when applying to come to the U.S. There was no immediate indication whether the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency would move promptly to deport him.
Demjanjuk’s attorney in Germany appealed on Thursday a decision by an administrative court in Berlin to reject a suit filed by Demjanjuk last week, which argued that Germany should rescind its agreement to accept the retired autoworker, a resident of a Cleveland, Ohio suburb. Even if the court decides in Demjanjuk’s favor, the lawyer conceded that this might not stop his deportation. Demjanjuk’s son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said the family was hopeful the two countries might agree to an extradition rather than a deportation — which would mean a medical examination beforehand to determine whether he would be fit for trial. The family is hopeful that the last-ditch effort would prevent Demjanjuk’s trial in Germany.
Demjanjuk has denied the charges against him, arguing that he served in the Soviet army and was captured by Germany in 1942.
Demjanjuk, named Ivan in his native tongue, has been fighting to keep his U.S. citizenship since 1977, when the Justice Department recommended that it be revoked. By 1986, he was extradited to Israel to face charges that he was the brutal Nazi-era Treblinka camp guard known as "Ivan the Terrible."
Based in part on the American Justice Department investigation and Israeli testimony, Demjanjuk was sentenced to death in 1988 by a panel of the Israeli High Court of Justice. However, on appeal, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the death sentence in 1993, saying that new evidence from the collapsed Soviet Union introduced doubt that Demjanjuk was indeed Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka.
Immediately following the Supreme Court decision, ten Holocaust survivors petitioned the High Court of Justice demanding that Demjanjuk stand trial for Holocaust-era crimes as a guard at Sobibor and other concentration camps. The appellants argued that, while he may not have been identified as Ivan the Terrible, Demjanjuk could still be charged for his own crimes.
A legal battle between the U.S. Justice Department and Demjanjuk lasted for several years after the government in 1998 said that he ha indeed been a Nazi guard, and therefore could be deported. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal against deportation, but it has not been clear which country would accept him.