He is frail and almost 90 years old but a former SS guard will finally face justice over the deaths of almost 28,000 Jews in the Holocaust next week.
In what may be the final Nazi trial, John Demjanjuk, 89, will appear in court in Munich over allegations he took part in an extermination programme at Sobibor in Poland.
The Ukrainian-born former U.S. auto worker fought in the Red Army before being captured by the Nazis and recruited as a concentration camp guard.
He was extradited from the U.S. in May after months of legal wrangling and is due to go on trial on
Monday despite his family insisting he is too frail to be in the dock.
John Demjanjuk, pictured earlier this year, is going on trial in Munich on Monday over the murder of 27,900 Jews in the Holocaust
Demjanjuk, who denies any involvement in the Holocaust, will come face to face with one of the lucky few who survived the camp where at least 250,000 people died.
Thomas Blatt, whose younger brother and parents were killed at Sobibor, has travelled from his American home to see the trial.
'It is important to hear the testimony of those times, for young people to truly know the meaning of the hell on earth that was Sobibor,' he 88-year-old told the Daily Mirror.
'The stink of carbon monoxide, the naked little children going to be gassed, the flames that licked out of the furnace chimney as all you knew and loved evaporated before your eyes.
'Demjanjuk is not an old man who deserves pity but who should come to terms with what he did.'
Clue: John Demjanjuk's alleged SS card
'His physical condition alters by the day, even by the hour. He is an old man suffering from a range of ailments,' his lawyer, Guenther Maull, told Reuters.
'His mood swings, too. Sometimes you think he as an old man who is mentally absent but you don't know if it's a general condition or an illness,' he said.
Despite protestations from his family, medics have deemed Demjanjuk fit for trial.
The hearings in Munich will be limited to two 90-minute sessions per day due to his frail condition.
The trial is due to last until May and Demjanjuk could be sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
'It is an opportunity to demonstrate what inhuman behaviour the Nazi regime executed and to respect my family's memory,' said David van Huiden, a Dutch co-plaintiff whose parents and 18-year-old sister were gassed at Sobibor.
'He should get the heaviest available punishment according to German law.'
The Wiesenthal Center, which says Demjanjuk pushed men, women and children into gas chambers, says the trial sends a message that justice can be done even after decades.
'John Demjanjuk has lived a largely undisturbed life. He has been with his family, celebrated birthdays and anniversaries, something his victims didn't have the chance to do,' said Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean of the Center in Los Angeles.
'Do we have compassion? No, not at all. He'll be in court where he belongs.'
Many Germans, keen to draw a line under the Nazi past and forge a new role for their country, are resigned to the spectacle of the trial which has underscored Germany's patchy record on bringing its Nazi war criminals to justice.
The Institute for Contemporary History in Munich says West Germany has seen only about 6,600 convictions. About two thirds of those individuals got sentences of less than two years in jail. There are no reliable figures for Communist East Germany.
'There have been many investigations but if you look at the dimensions of the crimes, the results are unsatisfactory,' said Andreas Eichmueller, a Nazi war crime expert at the Institute.
While acknowledging he was at other camps, Demjanjuk has denied he was in Sobibor, which prosecutors say was run by 20-30 SS members and 100-150 former Soviet prisoners of war.
In the gas chambers, Jews died within 30 minutes of a toxic mix of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, say prosecutors who argue Demjanjuk was at Sobibor for about six months in 1943.
Experts say the trial's most interesting aspect is whether prosecutors can prove Demjanjuk was party to specific crimes.
'The court will enter new ground if it convicts him just because he was there. Usually there has to be proof of a concrete crime,' said Eichmueller.
'The prosecutors seem to be saying purely because he was in an extermination camp, he was involved in murder. That's different from proving an actual crime,' said Eichmueller.
Demjanjuk was extradited from the United States to Israel in 1986, accused of being 'Ivan the Terrible', a notoriously sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp.
He was sentenced to death in 1988 but his conviction was overturned when new evidence showed another man was probably 'Ivan'.
