Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- John Demjanjuk, a suspected Nazi death-camp guard, must stand trial on charges that he aided in the killing of 27,900 people in the Sobibor concentration camp during World War II, a German court ruled.

The 89-year-old has to remain in custody, the Munich Regional Court said. The trial is likely to start in the beginning of November, the court said in an e-mailed statement today.

Prosecutors claim Demjanjuk, who was deported to Germany from the U.S. in May, assisted in the 1943 killings in then German-occupied Poland. They relied on a Sobibor work-identity card issued for Demjanjuk, which Bavarian police said they authenticated. The card was handed over to the Germans by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations.

“The Germans tortured him as a Ukrainian P.O.W. and are again” violating “his human rights,” his son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said in an e-mailed statement today. “They want a media show trial as there is not a scintilla of evidence that he ever harmed even one person during the war.”

“He is suffering and belongs home with his family,” the younger Demjanjuk said.

The older Demjanjuk’s Munich lawyer Guenther Maull said he couldn’t immediately comment.

More than 10 siblings, children or spouses of people killed in Sobibor have been given permission to join the proceedings as private plaintiffs, Barbara Stockinger, the Munich prosecutors’ spokeswoman, said in an interview. The status allows their lawyers to question witnesses or appeal rulings.

Sobibor Camp

Demjanjuk was fighting in the Red Army when he was captured by the Germans in 1942, according to the indictment. He was trained as a camp guard and served at Sobibor from March to September 1943. During that period, 27,900 Jews, mostly deported from the Netherlands, were killed in the camp, prosecutors claim.

The Sobibor camp’s only purpose was to kill Jews. Demjanjuk knew that and didn’t try to escape, prosecutors wrote in the indictment. He had the opportunity to flee when he was off duty and during missions outside the camp and he had a weapon that would have aided his escape, they claim.

The indictment lists 15 transports of Jews that arrived in Sobibor during the time when Demjanjuk allegedly worked at the camp. Upon arrival, the captives were told they had to take a shower-bath before settling in the camp. They had to undress and were forced into narrow chambers, which were then sealed. The Jews were then killed with engine exhaust, according to the indictment.

‘Extermination Process’

Camp guards herded the prisoners to the chambers from the trains, while mistreating them, prosecutors claim.

Demjanjuk took part in all “stations of the extermination process,” prosecutors wrote in the indictment.

A Ukraine native and retired autoworker, Demjanjuk lived near Cleveland until his deportation to Germany.

He was stripped in 1986 of the U.S. citizenship granted in 1958 and extradited to Israel to face charges that he was the guard known as “Ivan the Terrible,” who tortured Jewish prisoners while herding them into gas chambers at the Treblinka concentration camp.

Demjanjuk’s 1988 conviction and death sentence were overturned by Israel’s Supreme Court in 1993. The tribunal found reasonable doubt that Demjanjuk ever served in Treblinka.

He returned to the U.S. and regained his citizenship. In 2002, a federal court in Cleveland again revoked Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship, finding that he participated in the process at Sobibor by which thousands of Jews were murdered, according to the Justice Department. His appeals were rejected.

To contact the reporter on this story: Karin Matussek in Berlin at kmatussek@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: October 2, 2009 11:13 EDT