Five-year sentence for death-camp guard

MUNICH -- A German court convicted retired U.S. autoworker John Demjanjuk yesterday of taking part in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews as a Nazi death camp guard, breaking legal ground that could pave the way for the prosecution of many low-level cogs in Hitler's machinery of destruction.

Demjanjuk, 91, was sentenced to 5 years in prison on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder -- one each for the number of people killed at the Sobibor death camp during the six months in 1943 when he was convicted of standing guard there.

Presiding Judge Ralph Alt ordered him released from custody pending his appeal, a process that could take at least a year.

The case was considered groundbreaking because although scores of Nazi war criminals have been tried and convicted in Germany, in this case there was no evidence that Demjanjuk committed a specific crime.

His prosecution was based on the theory that if Demjanjuk was at the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, he was a participant in the killing there -- the first time such a legal argument has been made in German courts.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was a Soviet Red Army soldier captured by the Germans in Crimea in 1942. He is accused of then agreeing to serve as a "Wachmann," or guard, the lowest rank of the "Hilfswillige," former POWs who were subordinate to German SS men.

Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said from Ohio his father needs daily medical attention and would likely need to be moved into an assisted care facility. -- AP