Demjanjuk on trial in Israel. Wikipedia Commons

Next week the trial of alleged Nazi guard John Demjanjuk will begin in Munich. The Demjanjuk case has long been a source of controversy, and it doesn’t appear that the debate around the issues Demjanjuk’s case brings up will end any time soon if recent reports prove prophetic. The latest surprise in the case is that there are no longer any living witnesses. Despite this, the dead may still speak.

The trial for alleged Nazi guard John Demjanjuk begins on November 30th, but according to a report in The Local, all the eye-witnesses to his case are dead.

Guilty or Wrong Place, Wrong Time?

Demjanjuk has been in and out of the news over the last several years. He’s accused of being an accessory to 27,900 murders, which took place in 1943 while he was a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp in Poland. Demjanjuk’s case has made headlines, because he did not wield a lot of power in the Nazi party. The charges against him stem from the fact that Sobibor wasn’t a concentration camp, but rather a death camp. Prisoners sent to the camp weren’t sent there to be detained, but to be killed.

Witness statements as to his war time activities do exist, but they were produced some 30 years ago. Günther Maull, Demjanjuk’s defense attorney for the case questions whether or not the statements are worth anything, because they were obtained from the men possibly under pressure.

Wrongly Accused of Being “Ivan the Terrible”

Demjanjuk lived in the U.S. until his deportation to Germany earlier this year. Originally hailing from the Ukraine, Demjanjuk was captured during the war, and he maintains that he was a prisoner of war, not a war criminal. He ranks 3rd on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's list of most wanted war criminals.

He stood trial over 20 years ago in Israel, because he was accused of being the death camp guard “Ivan the Terrible”. The trial resulted in a death sentence, but that was overturned in 1993 when another man was indentified instead as “Ivan the Terrible”.

His case has spurred great controversy about the trial of war criminals. In a poll conducted by Cleveland.com, the majority of people polled said that they didn’t think that Demjanjuk should stand trial, because too many years had passed since his alleged crimes were committed.

It is anticipated that Demjanjuk’s trial will receive worldwide attention.

To learn more about National Socialism, read the following stories: Slide show of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,  "Heil Hitler" garden gnome causes a scandal in Nuremburg,  Germany 101: What was the July 20th Plot?,  This week in pictures in Germany: Soliders sworn in on anniversary of July 20th Plot,