Declaration
of the accused, John Demjanjuk,
to the criticism of the court and the
prosecution of his behaviour during the trial
I am personally thankful to the people who
are helping me in my hopeless position as a very ill person, be it in prison or
be it here in the courtroom. Therefore, I especially thank the medical
personnel who are very helpful in alleviating my major aches and pains and who
help me to survive this trial which for me is torture. As a matter of fact, I
point out the following:
1. Germany is
guilty in that through a war of destruction against the Soviet
Union, I lost my home and homeland.
2. Germany is
guilty, of making me become a prisoner of war.
3. Germany is
guilty of creating prisoner of war camps, where through purposeful denial of
enough food rations, I and millions of other Red Army prisoners were sentenced
to die of starvation and only with God’s help did I survive.
4. Germany is
guilty of forcing me to become a slave labourer for the Germans in the prisoner
of war camp.
5. Germany is
guilty, in that in this war of destruction, 11 million of my fellow Ukrainians
were murdered by the Germans and more millions of Ukrainians, including my
loving wife Vera, were abducted to Germany to
forced labour and slavery by the Germans.
6. Germany is guilty, in that thousands or hundreds of thousands of
my countrymen were made unwilling German collaborators and were forced to join
in the perverse genocide program against Jews, Sinti, Roma, Slavs, Ukrainians,
Poles and Russians by force and death threats, that hundreds and more than
hundreds, who wanted to refuse this, were killed for that by the Germans, and
on top of that, hundreds of thousands were deported to Ukraine and executed by
Stalin or tortured for ages in the Siberian Gulag and denegrated to work
as slaves for the Communists.
7. Germany is
guilty of forcing me to live a wretched life as a Displaced Person in a DP camp
for years after the war.
8. Germany is
guilty, even after 30 years of legal prosecution in Israel,
the USA,
as well as, Poland
and after more than 10 years of imprisonment, more than 5 of those being in a
death cell in Israel,
in that at the end of my life in my 90th year, I have been forcibly
deported to Germany.
9. Germany is
guilty, in that at the end of my life and at the end of my strength, false
prosecution for accessory to murder has been filed against me under the breach
of law of 65 years and against the EMRK of Germany.
10. Germany is
guilty for having me vegetate more than 9 months in Stadelheim, in a prison,
isolated, not free – though innocent.
11. Germany is
guilty, in that, without a chance of reversal, I have also forever lost my
second homeland, the USA.
12. Germany is
guilty, in that I have forever lost the sense of my entire life, my family, my
happiness, any kind of future and hope.
I experience every minute,
every hour, every day, every week and every month since May 12, 2009
that of being a prisoner of war in Germany. I experience this process as a continuation
of my terrible memories with Germans, as a continuation of the indescribable
wrong which has been done to me by Germans.
I am again and repeatedly an innocent victim of the Germans. I feel this as an inexpressible wrong that Germany is
making out of me, with the help of this trial, a prisoner of war, a war
criminal. I find it an unbearable arrogance of Germany, that Germany is
misusing me to turn attention away from the war crimes committed by Germans, to
make them forgotten and against the truth, so as to claim that the true
criminals of Nazi crimes are me, Ukrainians and the European neighbours of Nazi
Germany.
I consider this trial,
which is in breach of the equality of German SS members and a large number of
“German Travnikis”, is exclusively and only filed against me, an alleged
foreign Travniki, which has nothing to do with justice and the equality of
law. I have already had to defend myself
against the accusation of the Munich
prosecutor while in Israel. In Israel, I
was accused to be connected with the Nazi crimes in Sobibor. The Israeli
Supreme Court specifically recognized that this accusation of the Israeli
prosecutor could not be proven and a legal verdict was decided on the Sobibor
accusation, and in such a manner, took into account with special reference to
more than 7 1/2 years already suffered under arrest. I was jailed in Israel
for these charges against me for 7 1/2 years with 5 of those years being in a
death cell.
I feel it is not compatible
with fairness and humanity, that for over 35 years I have had
to defend myself as a constantly chased legal victim of the Office of Special
Investigation of the USA and
the circles behind it, especially the World Jewish Congress and the Simon Wiesenthal
Centre which live off of the Holocaust.
Now at the end of my life and the end of my strength, the 30th
or 40th trial in the same case is being made and I do not have the
strength to fight. I am helpless against
this judicial war waged against me for over 30 years which the Germans are now
continuing against me in place of the OSI.