Victims’ relatives testifying

MUNICH (AP) — Rudolf Salomon Cortissos sobbed as he told a Munich court about the letter his mother had written May 17, 1943 — four days before she was gassed in the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp with some 2,300 other Dutch Jews.

Cortissos testified Tuesday, the second day in a German court for John Demjanjuk, the retired Ohio autoworker being tried on charges of being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews in the Sobibor camp, including Cortissos’ mother, Emmy.

Sitting only feet away from Demjanjuk, Cortissos said he found her letter after his father died in 1959.

His mother had tossed it from the train that was taking her from Holland before it crossed the German border, Cortissos testified. The family had been in hiding, but she had been picked up in a sweep after going outside.

In neat handwriting, on a single piece of yellowed paper folded into quarters, Cortissos’ mother told the family she was being sent east to work — a lie propagated by the Nazis so people would be less likely to resist.

The 89-year-old Demjanjuk was deported from the United States in May to stand trial in Germany. He rejects the charges, saying he has been mistaken for someone else.

Demjanjuk — who suffers from several medical problems — was wheeled in to the Munich state court on a gurney Tuesday, slightly propped up lying on his back. A blanket covered his legs and his leather jacket was zipped up to his neck. As Cortissos told his story, Demjanjuk kept a blue baseball cap low over his face and had no visible reaction.

Cortissos is one of about 40 victims’ relatives who have joined the trial as co-plaintiffs, which is allowed under the German legal system. He said he regretted that his testimony did not appear to affect Demjanjuk.

“I had hoped we would have had kind of an eye contact, but we didn’t,” the 70-year-old told The Associated Press. “So far, it’s an old man — no emotional feelings, the way he is.”

Cortissos was one of five co-plaintiffs who made statements Tuesday.

Before that, prosecutors accused Demjanjuk of playing an active role in the Nazis’ machinery of destruction and of being a willing follower of Hitler’s racist ideology as they read their indictment aloud.

Demjanjuk showed little reaction as the 10-page indictment was read, but put his left hand to his brow as prosecutor Hans-Joachim Lutz detailed how Jews were stripped of their belongings and clothes, then led naked into the gas chambers of Sobibor.