John Demjanjuk, Convicted Death Camp Guard, Dies

John Demjanjuk, a retired U.S. autoworker who was convicted of being a guard at the Nazis' Sobibor death camp despite steadfastly maintaining over three decades of legal battles that he had been mistaken for someone else, died Saturday, his son said.He was 91.
Demjanjuk, convicted in May of 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder and sentenced to five years in prison, died a free man in a nursing home in the southern Bavarian town of Bad Feilnbach.

He had been released pending his appeal.

John Demjanjuk Jr. said in a telephone interview from Ohio that his father died of natural causes.

Demjanjuk had terminal bone marrow disease, chronic kidney disease and other ailments.
"The court is convinced that the defendant ... served as a guard at Sobibor" from March 27, 1943, until mid-September 1943, Alt said in his ruling.

Israeli Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer, who researches at the Yad Vashem memorial, said Demjanjuk's story showed an important moral lesson.

"You don't let people, even if they were only junior staff, get away from responsibility," Bauer said.

Despite his conviction, his family never gave up its battle to have his U.S. citizenship reinstated so that he could live out his final days nearby them in the Cleveland area.

One of their main arguments was that the defense had never seen a 1985 FBI document, uncovered in early 2011 by The Associated Press, calling into question the authenticity of a Nazi ID card used against him.

Demjanjuk maintained that he was a victim of the Nazis himself — first wounded as a Soviet soldier fighting German forces, then captured and held as a prisoner of war under brutal conditions.

"I am again and again an innocent victim of the Germans," he told the panel of Munich state court judges during his 18-month trial, in a statement he signed and that was read aloud by his attorney Ulrich Busch.

He said after the war he was unable to return to his homeland, and that taking him away from his family in the U.S. to stand trial in Germany was a "continuation of the injustice" done to him.

"Germany is responsible for the fact that I have lost for good my whole reason to live, my family, my happiness, any future and hope," he said.

His claims of mistaken identity gained credence after he successfully defended himself against accusations initially brought in 1977 by the U.S. Justice Department that he was "Ivan the Terrible" — a notoriously brutal guard at the Treblinka extermination camp.

In connection with the allegation, he was extradited to Israel from the U.S. in 1986 to stand trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, convicted and sentenced to death.
But the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993 overturned the verdict on appeal, saying that evidence showed another Ukrainian man was actually "Ivan the Terrible," and ordered him returned to the U.S.

The Israeli judges said, however, they still believed Demjanjuk had served the Nazis, probably at the Trawniki SS training camp and Sobibor.

But they declined to order a new trial, saying there was a risk of violating the law prohibiting trying someone twice on the same evidence.

Demjanjuk returned to his suburban Cleveland home in 1993 and his U.S. citizenship, which had been revoked in 1981, was reinstated in 1998.

Demjanjuk remained under investigation in the U.S., where a judge revoked his citizenship again in 2002 based on Justice Department evidence suggesting he concealed his service at Sobibor.

Appeals failed, and the nation's chief immigration judge ruled in 2005 that Demjanjuk could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine.

Prosecutors in Germany filed charges in 2009, saying Demjanjuk's link to Sobibor and Trawniki was clear, with evidence showing that after he was captured by the Germans he volunteered to serve with the fanatical SS and trained as a camp guard.

Though there are no known witnesses who remember Demjanjuk from Sobibor, prosecutors referred to an SS identity card that they said features a photo of a young, round-faced Demjanjuk and that says he worked at the death camp.

That and other evidence indicating Demjanjuk had served under the SS convinced the panel of judges in Munich, and led to his conviction.

He was ordered tried in Munich because he lived in the area briefly after the war.

It was not yet known whether he would be brought back to the U.S. for burial.

Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk (dehm-YAHN'-yook) had steadfastly denied any involvement in the Nazi Holocaust since the first accusations were levied against him more than 30 years ago.

"My father fell asleep with the Lord as a victim and survivor of Soviet and German brutality since childhood," Demjanjuk Jr. said.

"He loved life, family and humanity. History will show Germany used him as a scapegoat to blame helpless Ukrainian POWs for the deeds of Nazi Germans."

His conviction helped set new German legal precedent, being the first time someone was convicted solely on the basis of serving as a camp guard, with no evidence of being involved in a specific killing.

Presiding Judge Ralph Alt said the evidence showed Demjanjuk was a piece of the Nazis' "machinery of destruction."
Demjanjuk, who was removed by U.S. immigration agents from his home in suburban Cleveland and deported in May 2009, questioned the evidence in the German case, saying the identity card was possibly a Soviet postwar forgery.

He reiterated his contention that after he was captured in Crimea in 1942, he was held prisoner until joining the Vlasov Army — a force of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others formed to fight with the Germans against the Soviets in the final months of the war.

Demjanjuk was born April 3, 1920, in the village of Dubovi Makharintsi in central Ukraine, two years before the country became part of the Soviet Union.

He grew up during a time when the country was wracked by famines that killed millions, and a wave of purges instituted by Stalin to eliminate any possible opposition.

As a young man Demjanjuk worked as a tractor driver for the area's collective farm.

After being called up for the Soviet Red Army, he was wounded in action but sent back to the front after he had recovered, only to be captured during the battle of Kerch Peninsula in May 1942.

After the war, Demjanjuk was sent to a displaced persons camp and worked briefly as a driver for the U.S. Army.

In 1950, he sought U.S. citizenship, claiming to have been a farmer in Sobibor, Poland, during the war.

Demjanjuk later said he lied about his wartime activities to avoid being sent back to Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union.

Just to have admitted being in the Vlasov Army would also have been enough to have him barred from emigration to the U.S. or many other countries.

He came to the U.S. on Feb. 9, 1952, and eventually settled in Seven Hills, a middle-class suburb of Cleveland.

He was a mechanic at Ford Motor Co.'s engine plant in the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park and with his wife, Vera, raised three children — son John Jr. and daughters Irene and Lydia.

Germany does not need Gazprom's Nord Stream pipeline

Germany refuses to build the third branch of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. The country plans to shut down its nuclear power plants and switch to alternative energy in addition to gas-powered electric power stations. Therefore, Germany would not need the third, the fourth and the fifth branches of Gazprom's pipeline, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

Russian PM Vladimir Putin stated last week that the second branch of the Nord Stream pipeline would be build along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. "The South Stream is next on the agenda. Another branch of Nord Stream is also possible," he said.

Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov specified that it could be possible only hypothetically. Gazprom, the world's second largest producer of natural gas, and Germany's RWE signed a memorandum on cooperation for the use of operating and the construction of new electric power plants in Germany, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. RWE participates in the Nabucco project, which is a competitor of Nord Stream.

Nord Stream's first leg with the capacity of 27.5 billion cubic meters is to be launched in October of the current year. The construction of the second branch of the pipeline is slated to begin in the autumn of 2012. The capacity of two branches of Nord Stream will make up 55 billion cubic meters. Thus, the volume of Russian natural gas delivered to the European Union may exceed 220 billion cubic meters a year.

"These are very impressive numbers, but the question is whether the additional capacities for the third leg of Nord Stream are going to be in demand in Europe. I think that the potential capacity of 203 billion cubic meters will be more than enough for Europe for many years ahead if Gazprom's share in gas shipments to Europe remains the same (23 percent)," Grigory Birg, a senior analyst with Investcafe said.

However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the country was not in need of excessive imports of gas. The German economy needs 80 GW of electric power. Nuclear power plants in the country give 20 GW, of which 8.5 GW have been cut out, Merkel said.

"About 11 GW is left. We want to cover a part of it with the help of renewable power sources, and we want to double their share. The volume that we have left does not require the third, the fourth or the fifth pipes of Nord Stream," Merkel said.

Analyst Grigory Bird also said that Nabucco, the competitor of Nord Stream, finds support in Europe. "This project will be able to deliver natural gas to Europe from Central Asia, so there is no need in the third branch of Nord Stream for Europe indeed," he said.

In the meantime, Turkey does not hurry to approve the construction of the South Stream project in its territorial waters. Turkey was supposed to give its agreement in December 2010. Now the Turkish government promises to make a decision by November 1. Russia is experiencing similar problems with Bulgaria, so the project can be delayed indefinitely.

Merkel wary of Russian gas

While German Chancellor Angela Merkel restrained from committing to Russian offers of “unlimited gas supplies” at a meeting in Germany this week, Germany’s largest utilities were eying up Russian energy giants for potential deals.

Germany’s main power producer RWE last week announced that it has begun talks with Russian energy giant Gazprom on gas and power joint ventures and media reports on Thursday said that state-owned Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg was in talks with Russian natural gas producer Novatek on the sale of a stake in VNG, east Germany’s largest gas supplier.

Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, who chairs the board of Gazprom, said at the bilateral meeting in Hanover that the energy monopoly is hoping for an increase in demand from Germany of 30-35 percent following the country’s decision this year to shut down all of its nuclear reactors by 2022. Russia already supplies Germany with 40 percent of its gas needs.

The German delegation was characteristically stand-offish on the issue, with Merkel committing only to “wait and see what happens.” But analysts say Germany has backed itself into a corner by deciding to phase out all of its nuclear plants and has little other choice than to significantly bump up Russian gas imports.

“There is room to increase supplies of biogas and renewable gas, but these will produce rather small percentage outputs,” said Marcel Viëtor, Program Officer for Energy and Climate at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “To obtain larger supplies, Germany needs additional natural gas imports.” The antics of big German power producers go against the grain of European Commission aims to reduce EU dependence on Russian gas. RWE is a key partner in the European Commissionbacked Nabucco pipeline, which aims to bring gas to Europe from the Middle East via the Caspian Sea.

Merkel told reporters Tuesday that pricing issues were the main obstacle standing in the way of increased Russian gas supplies to Germany. Several European utilities have been negotiating with Gazprom over the past year to cut its fuel prices in long-term contracts, which have become loss-making.“Germany wants to leave room for a lowered price so it will wait until the situation is more settled, probably until 2012,” said Elena Savchik, Oil and Gas Analyst at Moscow-based Aton investment bank. “A 30-35 percent increase is fully realistic in the longrun.”

German prosecutors drop Demjanjuk sentence appeal

BERLIN, July 8, - German prosecutors withdrew their appeal on Friday against a court decision to free convicted Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk. Munich prosecutors said the 91-year-old Demjanjuk no longer posed a flight risk since he is confined to a nursing home.

Ukraine-born Demjanjuk is stateless after being stripped of his U.S. citizenship before his extradition to Germany in 2009.

In May a Munich court convicted Demjanjuk of helping to kill more than 28,000 people at the Sobibor camp in German-occupied Poland during World War Two.

But prosecutors later filed an appeal against Demjanjuk's five-year prison sentence and his immediate release from jail, which the court said was because of his advanced age.

Prosecutors had initially demanded a six-year sentence.

Demjanjuk's lawyers have also appealed his guilty verdict but it will take at least a year to go through the required legal procedures.

Demjanjuk, who was once top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals, said he was drafted into the Soviet army in 1941 and then taken prisoner by the Germans.

Demjanjuk was initially sentenced to death two decades ago in Israel for being the notorious "Ivan the Terrible" camp guard at Treblinka in Poland. The guilty verdict was overturned on appeal by Israel's supreme court in 1993 after new evidence emerged pointing to a case of mistaken identity.

Germany, Ukraine Want To Modernise Gas Pipelines

BERLIN, Germany -- Germany and Ukraine want to work together to modernise gas pipelines in the former Soviet satellite state, the two countries' leaders said on Monday.At a joint news conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the two countries would launch a business forum this autumn as a platform for the expansion of energy ties and German investment.

"In particular, the possibility should be discussed of how and to what extent Germany can play a constructive role in the restructuring of the Ukrainian gas market," Merkel said.

Ukraine runs the main transit route for Russian gas headed to Europe, and Kiev and Moscow have a history of gas pricing disputes that have disrupted European supplies.

However, those disputes took place amid badly strained relations between the Kremlin and Ukraine's pro-Western former President Viktor Yushchenko.

Yanukovich, who has tilted foreign policy sharply back towards Russia since taking office, said he had proposed certain plans to Merkel, but did not mention specifics.

"Ukraine wants to be, and will be, a dependable partner for both Russia, a gas supplier, and Europe, an end user," he said.

It was in Europe's interest to help modernise the pipelines in order to gain influence over their use, he added.

Yanukovich says that taking Ukraine into the European mainstream is the focus of his foreign policy.

Ukrainian President Pledges To Tackle ‘Ransacking’ Corruption

BERLIN, Germany -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych said the former Soviet republic needs to tackle corruption that’s “ransacking” the state’s budget in order to lure investors and forge ties with the European Union.
The Ukrainian parliament will begin passing laws reforming the court system next month as a way to rebuild trust among international investors, Yanukovych said in a speech today in Berlin.

“Today we confront the terrible cases of corruption and the ransacking of the budget,” Yanukovych said. “The country cannot go on like this.”

During a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Yanukovych said Ukraine would be a “trustworthy partner” for the west, citing disputes with Russia over natural gas that have disrupted deliveries to Europe twice since early in 2006.

Merkel took aim at Ukraine’s press freedoms, saying that “we still have questions” on the issue.

Yanukovych’s seven-month-old government has bolstered relations with Russia and scrapped policies of his Western- oriented predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April cut Ukraine’s gas price by about 30 percent, while the Ukrainian government agreed to extend Russia’s lease on a naval port in the Black Sea.

Merkel said she supported an association treaty between the EU and Ukraine, which ships about 80 percent of Russia’s gas exports to Europe.

“We are obligated to find a solution that can really exclude any future instability as far as gas delivery is concerned,” Yanukovych said after meeting with Merkel.

Historian Doubts Demjanjuk's Wartime Account

MUNICH, Germany -- A U.S. military historian on Wednesday testified in the trial of the retired Ohio autoworker accused of being a guard at the Nazis' Sobibor death camp and expressed doubt about John Demjanjuk's account of his whereabouts in the last years of World War II.
Bruce W. Menning told the Munich state court Wednesday that Demjanjuk's claim he went to the Austrian city of Graz late in 1944 to join a Ukrainian force fighting the Soviets under German command was "implausible" as the group only came through the Austrian city in March 1945.

But defense attorney Ulrich Busch rejected Menning's testimony, saying his account of historical events was partly wrong.

Demjanjuk, who was deported from the U.S. to Germany in May 2009, is being tried on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder. He denies the charges and says he was never a camp guard.

The defense maintains Demjanjuk was a Soviet soldier captured by the Germans and spent most of the war in prison camps himself.

Menning, an expert on the history of the Soviet Union who taught at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Kansas, also questioned other details of Demjanjuk's account.

He said that Demjanjuk's claim he spent some 18 months until October 1944 as a German prisoner of war at a camp in Chelm, Poland, was highly implausible.

Menning said on Tuesday the Germans moved the camp away from the front line by May 1944, from Chelm at the Ukrainian border to Skierniewice in the west of the country.

The historian previously testified as an expert in 1981, when the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk had his U.S. citizenship revoked after the 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.

Defense attorney Busch said on Tuesday that Menning was not an expert on the Russian or Ukrainian forces allied with Nazi Germany, such as the Shandruk or the Vlasov army. He asserted that Menning was wrong to claim those forces didn't exist until 1945.

He said they were gathering their men months before they officially started their duty — suggesting Demjanjuk could have joined those fighters in 1944 as he claims.

Ein Reich, ein volk, ein Merc

Reports in Germany claim that a Russian billionaire has bagged an extra trophy from World War 2 - paying several million Euros for Adolf Hitler's original Mercedes.
The story in the tabloid paper Express quoted Dusseldorf vintage car-dealer Michael Froelich, who reportedly faced a moral dilemma after being asked to track down the fascist dictator's dark-blue 770 K model.
"I was really torn," he said. "After all, this was about the car of a horrible mass murderer."
However, according to AP, he found the car - perhaps encouraged by a fee somewhere between 4 million and 10 million euros from the unnamed Russian businessman.
Russia acknowledges faults in Magnitsky case Alexander Smirnov, the deputy director of the prison service, has acknowledged "visible violations" in the treatment of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in custody on November 16.
Smirnov was quoted in Russian media saying: " We are not going to minimise our guilt in any way - it is definitely there."
The investigative committee of the prosecutor general's office has started a probe on the orders of president Dmitry Medvedev.
Magnitsky, a lawyer, was arrested last year on tax evasion charges during an investigation into Hermitage Capital, a leading hedge fund.
Before his death he claimed he had been denied medical treatment for gallbladder stones, calculous cholecystitis and pancreatitis.

John Demjanjuk Trial To Break Legal Ground In Germany

The trial against suspected concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, is a legal first for Germany. For the first time, a person who was low on the chain of command is to be indicted, even though there is no proof of his having committed a specific offence. Other alleged henchmen have gotten off far more lightly.

The court stipulated that they were not to mention so much as a word about the case. Instead, Vera Demjanjuk, 84, told her husband John, 89, what she had planted in their garden at home. The telephone conversation, which lasted 20 minutes, was the only conversation to date between the Stadelheim Prison in Munich and Cleveland, Ohio. An official interpreter listened in on the conversation. “She hopes and believes that he will somehow return home,” says John Demjanjuk, Jr., the couple’s son.That is unlikely to happen. His father is being detained in Bavaria, waiting for his trial to begin. US authorities deported Demjanjuk in early May, when he was flown to Munich on a chartered flight. When he arrived, a German investigating judge handed Demjanjuk the arrest warrant, which stated that the accused was “under strong suspicion” of aiding and abetting the murders of at least 29,000 people.Demjanjuk is alleged to have worked in 1943 as a guard in the Sobibor death camp, and to have helped the Nazis commit mass murder against thousands of Jews. He has repeatedly denied the charges, and his family insists that it is the victim of a prosecution-obsessed justice system.On July 3, prosecutors said that doctors had determined that Demjanjuk, who has been held in custody in Munich since May 12, was fit to stand trial. However, they imposed one condition, saying that his court appearances be limited to two 90-minute sessions a day. State prosecutors said that formal charges could be expected this month and that a trial could commence as early as the autumn.The case against this alleged member of the SS is a first for the German legal system. For the first time, a foreign henchman from the lowest rung of the chain of command will be prosecuted, not because of his particularly gruesome behavior as a perpetrator of so-called “excessive acts,” but because he helped keep the killing machinery running smoothly.That won’t be easy. Will the prosecution in the case, the Munich public prosecutor’s office, be able to provide sufficient proof of his guilt? Can it demonstrate that he participated voluntarily in the campaign of murder?A number of documents suggest that Demjanjuk was part of a group of about 5,000 foreign helpers — people from the Baltics, Ukrainians and ethnic Germans living in other countries — who the Nazis trained at the Trawniki training camp, east of the Polish city of Lublin, to commit mass murder in occupied regions.Nevertheless, there is no evidence that Demjanjuk killed out of murderous intent or greed. Instead, he was probably an ordinary henchman, like thousands of others. But German courts have been extremely lenient in the past when it has come to putting these Nazi helpers on trial. In fact, even their superiors almost always got off lightly.In other words, the judiciary is planning nothing less than a radical break with a decades-long practice which was often perceived as offensive.Responding to a complaint against Demjanjuk’s detention filed by his attorney Ulrich Busch, the Munich Regional Court explained that the established practice of German courts in cases relating to SS overseers and guards in extermination camps “does not create a precedent.” In the arrest warrant, it states that Demjanjuk, as a guard, was not compelled to participate in mass murder. “He could have deserted, as many other Trawniki men did,” is the argument in the warrant.For Demjanjuk’s defense attorney, this line of argument “upends the entire postwar legal practice in Germany.” The court must conduct its proceedings on the basis of evidence, and yet it presumably also wants to avoid being accused of inaction or perhaps even leniency toward former Nazis. All of this creates the impression that the German judiciary is using the Demjanjuk case, which has become well-known because of its previous history, to make up for past omissions.Relatively Safe Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, is not the first presumed Nazi helper that the United States has deported to Germany. More than 100 men have had their US citizenship revoked for concealing their Nazi past, and 27 of them ended up in Germany.Dmytro Sawchuk, for example, traveled to Germany voluntarily in 1999 when he was about to be deported. US investigators accused the man, born in Poland of Ukrainian parents, of having participated in brutal ghetto evacuations after being trained in Trawniki, and of having supervised Jewish forced laborers in the Belzec extermination camp as they dug up thousands of bodies and incinerated them.The public prosecutor’s office in Heidelberg, to which the case was assigned, terminated the proceedings against Sawchuk after three years, arguing that Germany could only prosecute the case if the “Republic of Poland, as the criminal investigation authority principally responsible for criminal prosecution,” dispensed with extradition. Poland investigated the case itself, but later suspended its investigation. Sawchuk died in 2004.Liudas Kairys, who also trained at Trawniki and was a senior guard at the Treblinka camp, was a rank above Demjanjuk’s presumed rank in Sobibor. There was a lot of evidence against him from survivors and documents. He was sent to Germany in 1993, as he had hoped, after US authorities revoked his passport. From Kairys’s perspective, it was the right decision. Investigation proceedings launched against the native Lithuanian in 1993 for murder were suspended six years later by the prosecution in the western city of Darmstadt. Kairys had died in the meantime.In February 1982, the US attorney general asked his counterpart in Bonn for a stronger commitment. He wanted Germany to petition for the deportation of Nazi collaborators from Lithuania, Ukraine and Latvia who had been tracked down in the United States, and put them on trial in Germany.But Bonn’s justice minister turned down the request, arguing that deportation was only allowable in the case of crimes “that had been committed on the territory of the country submitting the request.” And because of the statute of limitations, he argued, only murder cases could be prosecuted anyway.The former Trawniki men living in Germany could also feel relatively safe, as long as there was no evidence of their having been Exzesstäter, in other words, people who committed excessively cruel acts. One such Exzesstäter was Treblinka guard Franz Swidersky, who was sentenced to a seven-year prison term in Düsseldorf. Another former guard in Belzec, who had held the rank of Zugwachmann, or platoon member, is spending his retirement in an idyllic village in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He had testified about the Nazi death camps in two trials, but he was unwilling to talk about his experiences with SPIEGEL.Those at the lower ends of the chain of command, and their supervisors, invoked the principle of Befehlsnotstand, a legal term applied to those who carried out a criminal command because they would otherwise have endangered their lives. The historian Jochen Böhler characterizes the defense as being the justice system’s “top favorite for acquittals”: Almost all of the accused alleged that they would have suffered if they had refused to follow orders — and that they had only killed on command.Sadists or Pitiful Old Men?In the trials conducted in Hagen, West Germany, in 1965-66, against former SS men who had served at Sobibor, only one defendant was given a life sentence: Karl Frenzel, the camp director, a gruesome sadist who had whipped a dying prisoner and shot him personally. Five defendants received prison terms of between three and eight years, and five others were acquitted.Karl Streibel, the commandant of the Trawniki training camp, was tried in a Hamburg court from 1972 to 1976. He and five other defendants, all senior members of the camp administration, went unpunished. The judges argued that the Trawniki trainers had not been aware of the purpose for which they were training the foreign workers — a somewhat dubious interpretation of their tasks.If it was already so difficult to bring to justice the men who had been higher up the chain of command, how are the courts expected to deal with a man like Demjanjuk, a captured member of the Red Army who was apparently recruited by the SS in 1942?The Trawnikis — as the men trained at the camp of that name are known — were undoubtedly among the “most notorious offenders of World War II,” says Hamburg historian Frank Golczewski. Many profited shamelessly from the death camps, using money and gold taken from the murdered prisoners to pay for sex with women in the surrounding villages.And yet, says Peter Black, chief historian at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, one cannot conclude that these men volunteered to commit mass murder. The conditions in the Nazi prisoner-of-war camps were so horrific, according to Black, that the men “had limited options.” The non-German volunteers were at the lowest end of the hierarchy. If they refused to cooperate, says Black, “they could be shot on the spot,” at least until the spring of 1943.Helge Grabitz, a well-known Hamburg criminal prosecutor who has since died, also believed that the Trawnikis were “coerced.” They volunteered, according to Grabitz, “to escape certain death from starvation, freezing to death or epidemics in the camps.” The “proven inhuman atrocities” could hardly be attributed to individual offenders, she wrote, making criminal prosecution “relatively difficult.”Neither Canada nor Britain nor Australia managed to convict former Trawnikis who had immigrated to those countries.In the Demjanjuk case, Germany now hopes to improve on that record, while at the same time establishing stricter benchmarks

Klitschko To Fight At 60,000 Seat Venue

BERLIN, Germany -- When Vladimir Klitschko steps into the ring against Ruslan Chagaev at Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen on Saturday, it will be in front of the largest boxing audience in Germany since Max Schmeling fought in the 1930s.
Action inside the ropes, however, might not live up to the hype.Klitschko, the IBF and WBO heavyweight champion, was supposed to be fighting David Haye to settle a running verbal feud. But Haye bowed out earlier this month, saying he had injured his back.Haye asked to reschedule the fight in July, but Klitschko wanted to keep the date and the 60,000-seat sellout - the biggest boxing crowd in Germany since Schmeling fought Adolf Heuser in front of 70,000 people in Stuttgart on June 2, 1939."It's a chance that's coming around for the first time in my entire sporting career," the 33-year-old Ukrainian said. "I'm incredibly excited about the 60,000 fans."Chagaev, 30, was named the WBA's "champion in recess" in 2008 after withdrawing from two fights against Nikolai Valuev. After a third bout between the two scheduled for last month in Helsinki was cancelled due to Hepatitis-B antigens being found in Chagaev's blood, the WBA announced Valuev as the rightful champion and put Chagaev's honorary title "under review."As of Friday, the WBA had not clarified whether Klitschko (52-3) will fight for a piece of that title on top of defending his belts.Michael Ehnert, the doctor for Universum, which is promoting Saturday's fight, said Chagaev is fit to fight in Germany."Since getting Hepatitis B many years ago, Ruslan is simply a carrier of Hepatitis-B antigens. This has not led to an infection," Ehnert said.Klitschko has said he has been immunized against Hepatitis B and is not worried about the fight.In February, Chagaev (25-0 with one draw) won a technical decision over Carl Davis Drumond in Rostock, Germany. It was the Uzbekistan-born boxer's first fight in more than a year.

German Foreign Minister To Visit Ukraine

BERLIN, Germany -- German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski are to jointly visit Ukraine this week, German government sources announced on Monday.
The tripartite talks are to focus on the global economic crisis, which has hit Ukraine particularly badly, a foreign ministry spokesman said.Further subject for discussion was Ukraine's 'internal political stalemate,' the spokesman added. Coalition attempts by Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko and the pro-Russian opposition Party of the Regions recently failed.Ukraine's economy has been particularly hard-hit by the world financial crisis, and is the recipient of a multi-billion-dollar IMF rescue package.Germany and Poland agreed on a joint initiative to support Ukraine during a European Union (EU) foreign ministers' council in April.

Ukraine's Long-Term Prospects Depend On Germany's Relations With Russia, Says Merkel

BERLIN, Germany -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Ukraine's long-term prospects depend on the development of Germany's partnership and strategic relations with Russia.

She was speaking with foreign journalists in Berlin, Deutsche Welle reported.Merkel said that owing to its geographical position, Ukraine is obliged to stay between the European Union and Russia in all senses of the phrase."Finally, Ukraine's long-term prospects depend much on how we manage to build our partnership and strategic relations with Russia. This is fully in Ukraine's interests," she said.Speaking about Ukrainian-Russian relations, she pointed to the domestic crisis in the country and added that Ukraine's political situation is very difficult, and that it is very hard for the country's leadership to take any decisions."Of course, we would like to assist Ukraine in becoming more politically stable," she said.Merkel said that Ukraine is unambiguously in the sphere of Germany's interests, and that it also belongs to countries of the Eastern Partnership initiative.She said that a special EU summit on eastern policies is scheduled for May 7, 2009. She said that relations with Ukraine and the provision of assistance to the country to tackle the economic crisis would be discussed at the summit.As reported, EU officials will participate in a conference in Brussels on March 23 dedicated to the modernization of the Ukrainian gas transportation system.

German Warning For Russia: Maintain Europe’s Gas Flow

BERLIN, Germany -- Germany, the Western European country with the closest ties to the Kremlin, warned Russia on Friday to abide by its contractual relations, saying its reputation as a reliable supplier of gas could no longer be taken for granted as a result of the two-week gas dispute between Ukraine and Russia that has left millions of homes without heat.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who met Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Berlin on Friday evening, made it clear that Russia’s “credibility” was now on the line. “We have to restore trust and responsibility,” she said before the meeting.A government spokesman, Thomas Steg, said Friday that it was crucial that both Ukraine and Russia “abide by their contractual obligations.”Large parts of the Balkans, especially Bulgaria, have been without natural gas over the past 10 days during one of the coldest spells of the winter, while Russia and Ukraine have haggled over what price Ukraine will pay for its gas and what price Russia will pay for sending gas across Ukraine.More than 80 percent of Russian gas destined for markets in Europe is sent through the Ukrainian transit system.Mr. Putin, in Berlin to meet with energy officials and attend an agricultural fair, proposed the establishment of a consortium of European gas firms that would provide gas to Ukraine and get pipelines to Europe working again “reasonably fast.”The consortium would provide “technical gas” to Ukraine to build enough compression in the pipeline to begin deliveries to Europe.Normally, Russia supplies such gas.However, the idea of a consortium of any sort is likely to raise hackles in Ukraine, where it would almost certainly be viewed as an attempt by Mr. Putin to wrest control of Ukraine’s transit pipeline.A 2005 pricing dispute was widely regarded by Ukraine as such a power play, while an earlier Russian proposal for a consortium played a significant part in the events that led to Ukraine’s pro-Western Orange Revolution of 2004.Mr. Putin is scheduled to meet with Ukraine’s prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, in Moscow on Saturday to discuss ways to resolve the dispute.Ms. Tymoshenko has had difficult relations with her partner in Ukraine’s governing coalition, President Viktor A. Yushchenko, and Mr. Putin has offered her his support in the past in what his detractors called a transparent effort to split the pro-Western government.Russia also appears to be trying to gain the backing of the European Union in pressing Ukraine to accept the consortium arrangement; on Friday in Berlin he emphasized that the group’s refusal to criticize Ukraine was an implicit form of support.In Moscow, Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, pursued much the same line. “We are ready to look for any long-term solution,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse. “We hope Ukraine is ready to do the same and that our European partners will help bring about the necessary decisions.” So far, these entreaties have been rebuffed in Europe.With frustration rising in Europe over the standoff, the European Commission threatened Friday to review its entire relationship with Russia and Ukraine unless there was a breakthrough this weekend.“We will have to look,” said Johannes Laitenberger, the European Commission spokesman, “point by point, at our relationship with Russia and Ukraine and whether we can continue to do business as usual in these circumstances.”