{"id":3212,"date":"2011-05-13T16:00:58","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T20:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=3212"},"modified":"2011-05-13T15:49:20","modified_gmt":"2011-05-13T19:49:20","slug":"holocaust-conviction-began-in-cleveland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/05\/holocaust-conviction-began-in-cleveland","title":{"rendered":"Holocaust Conviction Began in Cleveland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By JOHN CANIGLIA<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>c. 2011 Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n<p>CLEVELAND (RNS) The case that led to John Demjanjuk&#8217;s conviction in Germany on Thursday (May 12) was laid out 10 years ago in a Cleveland courtroom, where lawyers sparred over his wartime past.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, prosecutors said he was a Nazi guard at an extermination camp. Defense attorneys said he was a prisoner of war.<\/p>\n<p>The views on the case of the great-grandfather from Seven Hills, Ohio, continued on Thursday, as Demjanjuk was convicted of taking part in the murder of 28,000 Jews during World War II.<\/p>\n<p>Jewish advocates called the decision a victory; others called it a travesty.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Do you really think for one minute that he was going over there to be acquitted?&#8221; said Joseph McGinness, a Cleveland attorney who has represented nine men suspected of working for the Nazis. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I considered this to be a show trial, and the verdict was a forgone conclusion,&#8221; McGinness said.<\/p>\n<p>John Broadley, who represented the 91-year-old Demjanjuk for decades in U.S. proceedings, said: &#8220;The Germans simply wanted to put their own guilt to rest, and what better way than to convict one of their own prisoners?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But Jonathan Drimmer, who prosecuted the case against Demjanjuk in Cleveland, said the evidence against him is &#8220;overpowering.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lee C. Shapiro, of the American Jewish Committee in Cleveland, applauded the ruling, which she said held Demjanjuk accountable for being an accessory to the deaths of thousands of people.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To be a part of the camp apparatus where innocent people were murdered means that he is held responsible, too,&#8221; she said. &#8220;It&#8217;s an important signal to the world community that mass murderers are accountable to justice.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>(John Caniglia writes for the <\/em>Cleveland Plain Dealer<em>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By JOHN CANIGLIA c. 2011 Religion News Service CLEVELAND (RNS) The case that led to John Demjanjuk&#8217;s conviction in Germany on Thursday (May 12) was laid out 10 years ago in a Cleveland courtroom, where lawyers sparred over his wartime past. At the time, prosecutors said he was a Nazi guard at an extermination camp.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,41,8,9],"tags":[743,499,510,147,742,744,2202,745],"class_list":["post-3212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-judaism","category-news","category-rns","tag-clevaland","tag-germany","tag-holocaust","tag-jews","tag-john-demjanjuk","tag-prisoner-of-war","tag-rns","tag-world-war-ii"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Holocaust Conviction Began in Cleveland<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/05\/holocaust-conviction-began-in-cleveland\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Holocaust Conviction Began in Cleveland\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By JOHN CANIGLIA c. 2011 Religion News Service CLEVELAND (RNS) The case that led to John Demjanjuk&#8217;s conviction in Germany on Thursday (May 12) was laid out 10 years ago in a Cleveland courtroom, where lawyers sparred over his wartime past. 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