Death Camp Survivor Confronts Demjanjuk

Ukranian guards 'worse than Germans,' Thomas Blatt tells court
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 20, 2010 2:15 AM CST
Death Camp Survivor Confronts Demjanjuk
Thomas Blatt, one of the joint plaintiffs in the Demjanjuk trial, arrives in the country court building in Munich yesterday.   (AP Photo/Oliver Lang, Pool)

One of the very few survivors of Sobibor yesterday recounted death camp horrors at the Munich trial of alleged SS guard John Demjanjuk. Thomas Blatt, 82, told jurors how he saw his parents and 10-year-old brother sent to the gas chambers at the Polish camp, the Independent reports. Ukrainians like Demjanjuk, who later became a US citizen, were "far worse than the Germans," Blatt told the court, telling of the camp uprising when he escaped.

Blatt says he can't positively identify Demjanjuk as having been at the camp, although prosecutors say they have evidence proving he was there at the time of the atrocities Blatt described. Demjanjuk, accused of being an accessory to the murders of 27,900 Jews, lay in a hospital bed in a corner of the courtroom with his eyes closed during Blatt's testimony.
(More John Demjanjuk trial stories.)

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