Demjanjuk’s Family Appeal Decision on Death
The family of John Demjanjuk appealed the decision by German prosecutors to close an investigation into the convicted Nazi war criminal’s death.
Prosecutors in the German state of Bavaria late last month determined that Demjanjuk’s death was not hastened by medication administered at a nursing home in Bavaria. Demjanjuk died while he was awaiting an appeal of his conviction last year by a Munich court for his role in the murder of 27,900 people at the Sobibor camp in Poland.
Ulrich Busch, an attorney for Demjanjuk, filed an appeal on Tuesday that said the decision contradicts “all medical knowledge” about the drug Novalgin, which was used to treat Demjanjuk, according to The Associated Press. The drug is common in Germany but banned in the United States and other countries.
Busch had filed a complaint in May with German prosecutors asking them to open an investigation of five doctors and a nurse, alleging that the pain medication they gave to Demjanjuk added to his kidney problems. Demjanjuk died in March at 91.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO