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CRIME

Death camp guard escaped by faking Nazi victim status

A former death camp guard wanted by Germany for abetting the killing of 29,000 Jews presented himself as a Nazi victim to refugee aid workers at the end of the war, documents indicated Tuesday.

Death camp guard escaped by faking Nazi victim status
Photo: DPA

John Demjanjuk, then known as Ivan, had himself registered in March 1948 as a displaced person – a category reserved mainly for former concentration camp prisoners and forced labourers, according to copies of records provided by the International Tracing Service (ITS) to AFP.

The ITS in the western German town of Bad Arolsen manages a vast archive documenting the fate of Nazi victims.

The agency on Tuesday provided a copy of what it said was Demjanjuk’s application dated March 3, 1948 in which he sought assistance as a refugee and asked for transfer to Argentina.

The file includes registration cards from 10 different refugee camps and medical records.

In a section in which he was asked to provide biographical information, he said he worked as a driver at the Sobibor concentration camp in today’s Poland but made no mention of his work as a guard.

German daily Bild, which first reported on the file Tuesday, quoted historian Hans-Juergen Boemelburg at the University of Giessen as saying that many war crimes suspects had attempted to escape justice after 1945 by presenting themselves as Nazi victims.

“There were about six million DPs (displaced persons). Among them were likely tens of thousands of collaborators who presented themselves as victims of deportation and were thus able to go underground,” he said.

Born in Ukraine in 1920, Demjanjuk was a soldier in the Red Army who was captured by the Nazis in the spring of 1942.

He trained at the Treblinka death camp in occupied Poland and served two years in the camps of Sobibor and Majdanek in occupied Poland and Flossenburg in Bavaria.

Demjanjuk has always insisted he was forced to work for the Nazis and had been mistaken by survivors for other cruel guards.

He immigrated to the United States in 1952 with his family, settling in Ohio where he found work in the auto industry.

Demjanjuk is wanted in Germany on charges of aiding the deaths of at least 29,000 Jews in concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Poland.

He has been fighting deportation to Germany, which issued a warrant for his arrest in March. The US government stripped him of his citizenship in 2002 after fresh evidence against him surfaced following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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CRIME

Suspect held in latest attack on German politicians

German police on Wednesday arrested a 74-year-old man suspected of hitting a former mayor of Berlin in the head, the latest in a rash of assaults against politicians in Germany.

Suspect held in latest attack on German politicians

The German government condemned the “growing despicable attacks”, stressing that the “climate of intimidation, of violence” was something that could not be accepted.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz blasted the attacks against politicians as “outrageous and cowardly”, stressing that violence did not belong in a democratic debate.

Franziska Giffey was at a library on Tuesday afternoon when the suspect came up from behind her to slug her in the head and neck with a bag containing hard objects, police said.

Giffey, who is now Berlin state’s economy minister and a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), was treated in hospital for light injuries.

The detained suspect was previously known to investigators over “state security and hate crimes”, said police, adding that they were investigating the motive of the attack.

Prosecutors were also considering if the man should be sent to psychiatric care because of indications that he might be mentally ill.

Giffey said she was “feeling well after the initial scare”. But she was “concerned and shaken about a growing ‘free wild culture’ in which people who are engaging politically in our country are increasingly exposed to attacks that are supposedly justified and acceptable.

“We live in a free and democratic country, in which everyone can be free to express his or her opinions,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“But there is a clear line — and that is violence against people,” she added.

Berlin’s current mayor Kai Wegner said anyone who attacked politicians was “attacking our democracy.

“We will not tolerate this,” he added, vowing to examine “tougher sentences for attacks against politicians”.

Nazi salutes

A European member of parliament, also from the SPD, had to be hospitalised last week after four people attacked him as he put up EU election posters in the eastern city of Dresden.

Matthias Ecke, 41, needed an operation for serious injuries suffered in the attack, which Scholz denounced as a threat to democracy. Four suspects, aged between 17 and 18, are being investigated over the incident.

READ ALSO: Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

All four are believed to have links to the far-right group known as “Elblandrevolte”, according to German media.

Dresden has been a hotspot for assaults against politicians, with another case reported on Tuesday.

S-Bahn in Dresden

An S-Bahn train drives through Dresden. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Robert Michael

A politician, identified by police only as a 47-year-old from the Green party, was threatened and spat on. She was putting up campaign posters for the European elections when a man came up, pushed her to the side and tore down two posters.

READ ALSO: Germany unveils new plan to fight far-right extremism

He insulted and threatened the politician, while a woman joined in and spat on the victim, police said. Officers arrested both suspects, police added, identifying them as a 34-year-old German man and a 24-year-old woman.

Both were in a group standing at the area and who had begun making the banned Hitler salute when the politician began putting up the posters.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year. Nevertheless, that was down from the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when the last general elections were held.

By Hui Min Neo

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