John Demjanjuk's son discounted on Tuesday the relevance of the newly released photos supposedly proving his father actively took part in the extermination of Jews at the Nazi Sobibor death camp.
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Historians in Germany have released previously unseen photos of the Nazi Sobibor death camp, including what they believe are images of John Demjanjuk, who was sentenced in 2011 for his role in the killing of about 28,000 people there.
"This claim is unfounded," his son John Jr. told Israel Hayom, adding this is was "an attempt at creating sensationalist fake news."
He added that the new photos "are a fascinating artifact with great historical importance for the Holocaust and the crimes carried out at Sobibor, and may even clear my father if they are examined forensically."
Ukraine-born Demjanjuk, who had been No. 1 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of "Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals", was deported to Germany from the United States in 2009, where he had spent much of his life as a car worker, to face trial.
The photos, described by historian Martin Cueppers as a representing a "quantum leap in the visual record on the Holocaust in occupied Poland", had belonged to Johann Niemann, once deputy commandant of Sobibor.
Between March 1942 and November 1943, some 1.8 million Jews were murdered as part of a Nazi scheme called "Aktion Reinhard", mostly at the extermination camps Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.
Few photos of Sobibor, which was razed before the end of World War Two, have survived so the pictures offer new insight into how the camp worked and into the individuals involved.
"It was a breathtaking experience for me to see these pictures of Sobibor," said Jetje Manheim, 72, from the Netherlands whose grandparents were murdered at the camp where Jews were killed with exhaust fumes in gas chambers.
"For the first time I saw what my grandparents glimpsed at the end of their exhausting 72-hour train journey. On that day, their lives ended," she said at the presentation, at a museum on the site of the former SS and Gestapo headquarters in Berlin.
The newly discovered photos, made available by Niemann's descendants, have helped keep alive the memory of her relatives.
Some pictures showed Niemann himself, including one of him posing on a horse on the ramp where deportation trains arrived.
Others are of Trawnikis, non-Germans enlisted to work at the camp, often as guards. Two prints probably show Demjanjuk who was transported to Sobibor in March 1943, said Cueppers.
The historians approached police to help them identify Demjanjuk. "The conclusion that it is probably John Demjanjuk was a combination of the most modern police methods and historic research," said Cueppers.
Demjanjuk was found guilty of being an accessory to the murder of about 28,000 Jews at Sobibor although he denied he was there.
He died in 2012 but the landmark verdict in Germany opened the way to more trials as it allowed a conviction on the grounds that presence in a camp alone was sufficient evidence of guilt.
Sobibor was razed after a prisoner uprising in October 1943 in which Niemann was killed.
The collection has been handed over to the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
His son John Jr. issued the following statement: "Regarding the latest reports out of Germany claiming newly discovered photos, it is a baseless theory to say any may prove my father was in Sobibor. The portion of the story relating to the Demjanjuk case is a sensational fake news attempt to sell more books. During the Israeli lower court proceedings in 1987, the defense produced previously concealed FBI reports of investigation and the findings of Donald J Ortner of the Smithsonian Institution both of which specifically cast doubt on the Trawniki picture being that of my father. Therefore, any that claim similarity to the Trawniki photo cannot credibly be my father. The new photos in their entirety are an exciting find and certainly of significant historical value regarding the Holocaust and the crimes committed at Sobibor, but they are not proof of my father being in Sobibor and may even exculpate him once forensically examined. Further, it's shameful for Germans to continue generally blaming Ukrainian POWs for the crimes of the Germans. Historical evidence has proven that many captured Soviet POWs were coerced to serve under a threat of death if they were not one of the over a million murdered in German POW camps."
