DECLARATION  of the ACCUSED

(On John Demjanjuk’s behalf, this Declaration was read in the German language by his attorney, Dr. Ulrich Busch, during the April 13^th 2010 public court session in Munich, Germany.)

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 trail which for me is torture. As a matter of fact, I point out the following:

1. Germany is guilty, 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 of the Germans in the prisoner of war camp.

5. Germany is guilty, 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, that thousands or hundred 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 and hundreds and more than hundreds, that wanted to refuse this, were killed for that by the Germans, on top of that hundreds of thousands were deported to Ukraine and executed by Stalin or tortured for ages in the Siberian Gulag and lowered 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 years after the war.

8. Germany is guilty, that 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 in a death cell in Israel, at the end of my life in my 90th year, I have been forcibly deported to Germany.

9. Germany is guilty, that against me 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 breech of law of 65 years and against the EMRK of Germany.

10. Germany is guilty for me having to vegetate more than 9 months in Stadelheim, in a prison, isolated, not free – though innocent.

11. Germany is guilty, that I have, without a chance of reversal, forever also lost my second homeland, the USA.

12. Germany is guilty, 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 as 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 with the help of this trial is making out of me, a prisoner of war, a war criminal. I find it an unbearable arrogance of Germany, that Germany is misusing me to turn the attention away from the war crimes committed by Germans, to make them forgotten and against the truth to claim that the true criminals of the Nazi crimes were me, the Ukrainians and the European neighbours of Nazi Germany.

I consider this trial, which is in breech 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 law of equality.  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 to 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 taking into account with special reference to the already suffered arrest of more than 7 ½ years.  I was jailed in Israel for these charges against me for 7 ½ years with 5 of those years 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 30^th or 40^th 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.