Demjanjuk's application for US citizenship denied by Ohio judge

21 December 2011

The convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk has failed in his bid to regain US citizenship. A judge in Ohio said Demjanjuk had lied about his whereabouts during World War II. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster rejected the 91-year-old, Ukrainian-born man’s citizenship claim, which was based on newly discovered documents, including one suggesting an incriminating document was a Soviet fraud. "John Demjanjuk has admitted that he willfully lied about his whereabouts during the war on his visa and immigration applications to gain entry to the United States," Polster said in his ruling. "Despite numerous opportunities, Demjanjuk has never provided a single, consistent accounting of his whereabouts during the war years 1942 to 1945."

In May 2011, Demjanjuk was convicted by a court in Munich, Germany which found that he had served as a guard at the Nazi German death camp Sobibor in occupied Poland and had been an accessory to the murder of at least 27,900 Jews. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but released on bail having served half of his sentence. Demjanjuk cannot leave Germany because he has no passport after being stripped of his US citizenship ahead of his deportation to Germany in 2009.