Nazi victims’ families testify at Demjanjuk trial

MUNICH - Rudolf Salomon Cortissos sobbed as he told a Munich court about the letter his mother had written on May 17, 1943 – four days before she was gassed in the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp with some 2,300 other Dutch Jews.

Cortissos testified Tuesday, the second day in a German court for John Demjanjuk, the retired Ohio autoworker being tried on charges of being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews in the Sobibor camp, including Cortissos’ mother, Emmy.

Sitting only feet away from Demjanjuk, Cortissos said he found her letter after his father died in 1959.

His mother had tossed it from the train that was taking her from Holland before it crossed the German border,

Cortissos testified. The family had been in hiding, but she had been picked up in a sweep after going outside.

In neat handwriting, on a single piece of yellowed paper folded into quarters, Cortissos’ mother told the family she was being sent east to work – a lie propagated by the Nazis so people would be less likely to resist.

“I promise you I will be tough and I will definitely survive,” she wrote in what turned out to be her final words to her family. She signed off: “Hope to see you again soon. Bye bye. Many kisses.”

The 89-year-old Demjanjuk was deported from the United States in May to stand trial in Germany. He rejects the charges, saying he has been mistaken for someone else.