About 40 demonstrators representing the Cleveland Jewish Activists Coalition marched to the Federal Courthouse here yesterday to demand that a trial date be set in the case of John Demjanjuk who is accused to having obtained his American citizenship by concealing his Nazi past.
The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, 59, was officially charged by the U.S. government in August, 1977 with having participated in atrocities while he was a guard at the notorious Treblinka extermination camp during World War II. An employe of the Ford Motor Co., he has lived in the Cleveland area since 1952 and presently resides in a spacious ranch-style home in Seven Hills, a suburb heavily populated by people of Ukrainian and Polish descent.
The demonstrators representing three local groups — The Ethic, Chavurah and Bear — carried signs reading” Justice Cannot Wait” and “Nazis Must Be Brought to Trial.” A spokesman for the Chavurah group, noting that charges were brought against Demjanjuk more than two years ago without a trial date being set, accused the U.S. government of “showing great insensitivity in this matter.” Another demonstrator said, “We want this trial to take place while the witnesses (many of them death camp survivors residing in Israel) are still alive and capable of testifying.”
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