Former concentration-camp guard recalls Demjanjuk as colleague

Feb 24, 2010, 18:52 GMT

München - A former guard in a Nazi concentration camp described Wednesday being with a 'thinner' John Demjanjuk during and after the Second World War, but said he did not recognize the John Demjanjuk on trial in Munich for death camp murders.

Alex N, aged 93, said he and the Demjanjuk he knew were both Soviet prisoners of war who went through the same training with the Nazis in Trawniki, Poland and served as auxiliaries at a concentration camp in Flossenbuerg, Germany.

'He did the same thing as me. We were both guards,' said N, pointing to Demjanjuk on old photographs. He said he saw Demjanjuk years later on television. 'I was aware at the time it was the same man,' he said.

Demjanjuk, 89, heard the evidence lying on a gurney in the German courtroom where he faces 27,900 counts of accessory to murder for pushing Jewish prisoners into gas chambers at Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Demjanjuk took off sunglasses he wears so he need not look at the ceiling lights, and the witness looked at him, but said, 'I don't recognize him. He was thinner back then.' After another look, he said, 'There isn't any resemblance.'

Sobibor survivors have already told the court they do not remember meeting Demjanjuk there.

N said he and Demjanjuk had later joined the Vlasov Army, a pro-German force made up of ex-Soviet defectors. After the war they had both lived in a refugee hostel in Landshut, Germany. He did not know if Demjanjuk had served at Sobibor.

German police are investigating whether N may have served the Nazis at Treblinka death camp and whether to charge him.