John Demjanjuk, a retired US engine mechanic convicted for his role in killing 28,000 Jews as a guard at a Nazi death camp during World War Two, died on Saturday aged 91 in a care home in Germany, police said. Once top of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi criminals, Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk denied the charges against him, saying he was drafted into the Soviet army in 1941 and then taken prisoner by the Germans.
A Munich court convicted Demjanjuk in May 2011 of helping to kill the Jews at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. He was sentenced to five years in prison but freed because of his age. He died in the early hours of Saturday at the care home near Rosenheim, south of Munich, where he had been living, Bavarian police said.
Demjanjuk was extradited to Germany from his home in the United States in 2009 to stand trial in Munich - birthplace of Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement. He attended the 18-month court proceedings in a wheelchair and sometimes lying down, speaking only to deny the charges.
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