Munich, Germany – Ex-Nazi Camp Official Did Not Remember Demjanjuk

Munich, Germany – Statements read during the trial of John Demjanjuk say a former Nazi SS training camp administrator did not remember the defendant but said his Nazi ID card looked real.

Demjanjuk is a retired Ohio autoworker being tried in Germany on some 28,000 counts of accessory to murder linked to allegations he trained at the SS camp Trawniki and then worked as a guard at the Nazi’s Sobibor death camp.

A Munich state court judge on Wednesday read statements given by Helmut Leonhard in 1987 to Israeli investigators saying he does not remember Demjanjuk among the thousands who trained Trawniki.

But he said he recognized the SS officers’ signatures on the Trawniki ID card prosecutors say belonged to Demjanjuk.

Demjanjuk denies being in any camp and says the ID card is fake.

A former U.S. Secret Service forensics testified that a counterfeiter with the right materials could have forged the documents.

Larry Stewart, who analyzed 22 documents being used in the case in 2000 by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations, told the Munich state court that the paper and ink dated to the 1940s.

But, he conceded, “it is possible that an expert counterfeiter who had access to real paper and ink of the time” could have forged them.

Still, he added, “I have cautiously looked for that and I did not find any evidence of that.”

Though the Ukrainian-born retired Ohio auto worker denies ever serving as a camp guard, the prosecution has presented a Nazi-issued identity card as evidence that they say has Demjanjuk’s picture on it and indicates he was a guard at Sobibor.

Demjanjuk’s defense team maintains that the card, which was originally in Russian hands, is a fake made by the KGB.

In Stewart’s first day of testimony on Tuesday, he told the court the card and other documents examined by him “appear to be original.”

Stewart testified over the objections of Demjanjuk’s defense team, who had argued that he should not be used as an expert witness because of his association with the OSI, which investigated Demjanjuk in the United States.

Attorney Ulrich Busch had also argued Stewart’s qualifications as an expert were tainted because he had been charged in the U.S. with perjury — though acquitted by a jury.