Victim families: Demjanjuk should be convicted

MUNICH (AP) — Relatives of people killed at the Nazis' Sobibor death camp and their lawyers said in closing statements at John Demjanjuk's trial today that the evidence shows he was a guard there and he should be convicted as an accessory to murder.

Ukraine-born Demjanjuk, 90, denies having ever served as a Nazi death camp guard, saying he was a soldier in the Red Army who was captured by the Germans and then spent most of the rest of the war as a prisoner himself.

But the prosecution argues that after his capture, he volunteered to serve the Germans as a guard.

Scores of people whose relatives were killed in Sobibor — and three survivors themselves — have joined the trial as co-plaintiffs, as allowed under German law.

Eastchester, New York-resident Aleida Keesing was not able to attend Wednesday, but said in a statement sent to the Munich state court both of her parents, as well as her brother and his family, were killed in the death camp in 1943, when Demjanjuk is alleged to have been a guard there.

"I hope that before I die I will get justice from this trial," she said.