On this day: John Demjanjuk charged

In the early 1980s he was accused of being a guard at Treblinka and in 1988 an Israeli court jailed him. But the sentence was subsequently overturned because of questions of mistaken identity, but after more paperwork was discovered he was deported to Germany to face trial.

The US Justice Department looked at the case again in 2002 and revoked his citizenship, giving him a deportation order three years later. The case opened in Munich in 2009, but took more than 18 months to reach a verdict.

Avner Shalev, the chairman of Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem, said when Demjanjuk was sentenced: "The trial and the verdict demonstrate that there is no statute of limitations on the crimes of the Holocaust."

What the JC said: It is a timely reminder that wickedness cannot be measured in degrees, particularly not when it comes to the passage of time. It proved impossible 16 years ago for Jerusalem prosecutors to prove inconclusively that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible. But the Germans believe that they have the evidence to pin Demjanjuk to time spent as a camp guard at Trawniki. What Demjanjuk did during the war is now about to be forensically unpeeled, not a moment too soon.

See more from the JC archives here.