Demjanjuk sentenced to death

Press, 26 April 1988, Page 1

Demjanjuk sentenced to death

I H NZPA-Reuter I, Jerusalem An I Israel court sentenced the Nazi war criminal, John Demjanjuk, to death yesterday for killing hundreds of thousands of Jews during World War 11.1 I Demjanjuk, deported from the United States in 1986, was sentenced to hang after the special I court indentified him as “Ivan the Terrible,” the sadistic guard who worked at Treblinka death camp in Nazi-

I i. -H \ ‘ occupied Poland. I Applause, cheering tnd i Whistling erupted In court I after Judge Zvi Tai announced the sentence,! saying there clould be no forgiveness for fhe mass murder of more than 800,000: Jews. I Tai | read the charges on which Demjanjuk was con- ■ rioted last week and told :he eburt: “Therefore we sentence iim to death for the crimes he las committed.”

The death penalty was last carried oujt in Israel in 1962, when AdoH Eichmann, oqe of the architects of Nazi Germany’s policy of exterminating the Jews, was hanged. The sentence will be automatically subject to appeal before thp Israeli Supreme Court. | “Most | crimes in the world are forgivable ... the crimes he committed cannot be forgiven either in law or in the

i heart,” Tai said. “A thousand deaths will not exonerate him or be weighed against his crime.” The court deliberated for three housr after hearing the 68-year-old defendant, fighting for his life, proclaim his Innocence in a final plea in his native Ukrainian. Brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair to hear the sentence, Demjanjuk shouted in Hebrew: “I am innocent”