Former Nazi guard convicted for role in killing 28,000 Jews dies at 91

PanARMENIAN.Net - John Demjanjuk, a retired U.S. engine mechanic convicted for his role in killing 28,000 Jews as a guard at a Nazi death camp during World War Two, died on Saturday, March 17, aged 91 in a care home in southern Germany, Reuters reported.

A Munich court convicted Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk in May 2011 of helping to kill the Jews at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. He was sentenced to five years in prison but freed because of his age.

Once top of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi criminals, Demjanjuk denied the charges against him, saying he was drafted into the Soviet army in 1941 and then taken prisoner by the Germans.

He died in the early hours of Saturday at the care home near Rosenheim, south of Munich, where he had been living, Bavarian police said.

Demjanjuk was extradited to Germany from his home in the United States in 2009 to stand trial. He attended the 18-month court proceedings in Munich - the birthplace of Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement - in a wheelchair and sometimes lying down.

He denied the charges but otherwise did not speak at his trial.

The court verdict said guards had played a key role at extermination camps like Sobibor, where at least 250,000 Jews are thought to have been killed despite only 20 German SS officers being there.