John Demjanjuk’s date with justice will continue well into the new year. The Munich court trying the retired Ford autoworker on charges he helped murder more than 28,000 Jews at Sobibor death camp in 1943 announced it has extended hearings to March.

Demjanjuk’s attorney Ulrich Busch has also said the trial will likely extend into fall 2011. The trial of the former Seven Hills resident began one year ago on Nov. 30, 2009, and hearing dates were originally scheduled to May 2010.

Court officials say they need the extension to thoroughly examine documentary evidence. After hearing from most witnesses in the case, the court must review about 100 exhibits still to be introduced at trial, according to Bloomberg.com.

Last week the court rejected more than 20 motions from the defense, many of which asked for documents from Russia, Israel and the U.S., Bloomberg.com reported. Defense attorney Busch has also asked to remove the judges for bias and to have the case dismissed.

Fit to stand trial or too ill?
The trial of Demjanjuk has also progressed slowly due to the 90-year-old’s complaints of poor health and back pain, which have led to the cancellation of more than a dozen hearings. To accommodate his health issues, the court has limited trial sessions to three a week and only two 90-minute hearings a day.

Although last week his son, John Demjanjuk Jr., emailed Bloomberg.com that his father is too sick to stand trial and that the family has been denied weekly clinical reports, doctors have pronounced Demjanjuk fit to attend the court sessions. Last week, a German doctor testified that Demjanjuk has benefited from drug treatments in Munich and his care was better than in the U.S., and his health has not significantly changed, the Associated Press reported.

During court proceedings, Demjanjuk typically is wheeled into the courtroom and lies in a hospital bed, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. The doctor testified last week that Demjanjuk suffers from low hemoglobin levels and has received blood transfusions, but since his last one in October, his blood levels are now fine.

Demjanjuk was deported in May 2009 from his suburban Cleveland home to Munich after decades of legal battles to remain in this country. Prosecutors contend he was a Soviet prisoner-of-war who volunteered to work as an SS guard, serving at Sobibor and other camps in occupied Poland. Defense attorneys maintain Demjanjuk spent the war in POW camps and was never a death-camp guard.

A trial focusing on documents

With eyewitnesses either dead or unreliable, documents have played a major role in the trial. Among the potentially incriminating ones are a Trawniki identification card and a listing of camps where Trawniki-trained SS guards served, also key evidence at Demjanjuk’s 2001 denaturalization trial in Cleveland. Defense attorneys maintain the documents are forgeries or somehow mistaken.

One of the documents to be introduced at the Munich trial is the 1993 judgment of the Israeli Supreme Court, Bloomberg.com reported. Demjanjuk, who spent five years on death row in Israel after his conviction as brutal Treblinka gas chamber guard "Ivan the Terrible," appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court.

The high court said documents made available after the collapse of the Soviet Union showed someone else was the Treblinka guard and freed Demjanjuk. But the Israeli court also said that evidence pointed to Demjanjuk being a guard at other Nazi death camps, including Sobibor.

Defense lawyers are now arguing that Demjanjuk was tried and acquitted in Israel on charges he was a death-camp guard, and trying him again amounts to double jeopardy, reported Deutsch Press-Adjenteur. Prosecutors counter that the murder charges at Sobibor are new ones that have not been argued before in court.

Similarities with the case of Samuel Kunz

Demjanjuk did not appear in court, let alone make a statement, during his 2001 trial in Cleveland. But last week in Munich, in his second written statement translated for the German court since the trial began, Demjanjuk criticized the three judges for suppressing evidence, the Associated Press reported. The court has denied defense requests for investigative files from Russia, Ukraine, Israel and elsewhere, saying they were not specific enough.

In his statement, Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian native, also accused Germany of selectively prosecuting him and not others in the Red Army who have been accused of the same crimes.

Demjanjuk may have been referring to Samuel Kunz, who died two weeks ago at age 89 and had been called as a witness at Demjanjuk’s trial. Both men trained as SS-camp guards at Trawniki, prosecutors allege.

Kunz, an ethnic German born in Russia, served in the Red Army and was captured by the Germans. After living openly in Germany for decades, last July Kunz was formally charged with being a guard at Belzec death camp and helping murder the 430,000 Jews there. His trial was to begin early next year.

According to his indictment, Kunz was given the choice of staying in the POW camp or cooperating with the Nazis, The New York Times reported. He chose to cooperate.

Kunz was accused of moving Jews from trains at Belzec, pushing them into gas chambers and throwing their bodies into mass graves, BBC News reported. In 1943, Kunz shot and killed eight wounded prisoners at the bottom of a trench, the indictment alleged. That year he also shot and killed two people who tried to flee from trains transporting prisoners to a death camp.

Last April, Kunz was third on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most wanted Nazi war crimes suspects. He was identified during examination of records for the Demjanjuk case, The New York Times reported.

Demjanjuk’s legal battle through the decades

1952 – Demjanjuk enters the U.S.

1977 – Demjanjuk is accused of being “Ivan the Terrible;” survivors identify his photo from a lineup.

1981 – After a trial with survivor testimony, a federal court in Cleveland finds he was the Treblinka guard and strips him of his citizenship for lying about his wartime service.

1986 – Demjanjuk is extradited to Israel to stand trial for war crimes.

1988 – Demjanjuk is convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death in part due to survivors’ testimony. He appeals.

1991 – The Soviet Union collapses during Demjanjuk’s appeal process. Information now available from Soviet archives includes testimony from Treblinka guards and slave laborers identifying Ivan Marchenko as “Ivan the Terrible.”

1992 – Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati reopens Demjanjuk’s case, criticizing government misconduct in withholding evidence from defense.

1993 – Israeli Supreme Court overturns Demjanjuk’s conviction, citing the evidence from Soviet archives. But the court concludes there is evidence that Demjanjuk was a guard at other concentration camps.

In September, Demjanjuk returns to U.S.

1998 – U.S. District Court Judge Paul Matia sets aside order revoking Demjanjuk’s citizenship, determining government was “reckless.” But he allows the government to file a new complaint.

1999 –U.S. government charges Demjanjuk with training as SS-guard at Trawniki and serving as guard at Sobibor, Majdanek and Flossenburg concentration camps. Soviet POWs volunteered to train with Trawniki unit, part of Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews.

2001 – At trial in Cleveland federal court, Judge Matia hears evidence that Demjanjuk was Nazi death-camp guard.

2002 – Matia strips Demjanjuk of his citizenship, finding he willingly worked as a Nazi concentration-camp guard and concealed those facts on his naturalization papers.

2004 – U.S. Supreme Court rejects Demjanjuk’s appeal. Prosecutors begin deportation proceedings.

2005 June – Immigration judge rules Demjanjuk can be deported. His attorneys argue he will be tortured and arrested if sent to Ukraine.

2005 Dec. – Immigration judge orders Demjanjuk deported. U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the ruling.

2008 May – U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear Demjanjuk’s appeal of deportation order, exhausting his appeals.

2008 June – German prosecutors announce they will seek to extradite Demjanjuk on charges of murdering Jews at Sobibor death camp.

2009 May – Demjanjuk is deported to Munich to face charges of accessory to murder of more than 28,000 Jews at Sobibor.

2009 Nov. – Demjanjuk’s trial on accessory-to-murder charges begins in Munich.

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