This is a World War II-era military service pass for John Demjanjuk. The 89-year-old went on trial Monday in Munich on 27,900 counts of accessory to murder following 30 years of legal efforts against Demjanjuk on three continents. The trial breaks new legal ground in Germany, which is pressing forward vigorously with attempts to bring to justice World War II perpetrators while they remain alive.

MUNICH — John Demjanjuk is heading back to court where prosecutors will lay out their case accusing him of being accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews at the Sobibor death camp.

The 89-year-old retired Ohio autoworker rejects the charges and said he has been the victim of mistaken identity and was never at Sobibor.

Prosecutors say Demjanjuk was a Soviet soldier who volunteered to serve the Nazis after he was captured and was a willing participant in the Holocaust.

The indictment to be read aloud today alleges Demjanjuk learned how to be a guard at the SS training camp Trawniki, and was then posted to the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in March 1943.

If convicted, Demjanjuk faces a possible 15 years in prison.

Demjanjuk was deported in May from the United States to Germany and has been in custody since then. He was deemed fit for trial, though his family says he is terminally ill. In deference to his fragile health, his trial at the Munich state court has been limited to two 90-minute sessions per day.

Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said on his way into the trial that it was important it was finally taking place.

"This sends a very powerful message that even if you didn't have the rank of an officer, you still have responsibility," Zuroff said.

Demjanjuk became a household name in the 1980s when he was extradited by the United States for trial in Israel on charges that he was the notoriously brutal guard at Treblinka who earned the moniker "Ivan the Terrible" for his deeds.

He was convicted in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity and spent seven years in prison until Israel's Supreme Court in 1993 overturned the conviction. It ruled another person, not Demjanjuk, was actually "Ivan the Terrible."

Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, a former Soviet Red Army soldier, is now accused of volunteering to serve as a guard under the SS after being taken prisoner by the Nazis in 1942.According to the indictment, he served as a simple "wachmann," or guard, under the SS. As such, he is the lowest-ranking person to go on trial for Nazi war crimes.The prosecution argues that even with no living witnesses who can implicate Demjanjuk in specific acts of brutality or murder, just being a guard at a death camp means he was involved in the Nazis' machinery of destruction.Before that, however, the prosecution must prove Demjanjuk, who is being tried in Munich because he lived in the area briefly after the war, really did serve at the camp.Demjanjuk questions the authenticity of one of the main pieces of evidence — an SS identity card prosecutors say features a photo of a young, round-faced Demjanjuk and that says he worked at the death camp.He claims to be a victim of mistaken identity and said he was a Red Army draftee from Ukraine captured during the battle of Kerch in the Crimea in May 1942 and himself held prisoner until joining the so-called Vlasov Army of anti-communist Soviet POWs and others. That army was formed to fight with the Germans against the encroaching Soviets in the final months of the war.

Police officers and medical assistants escort John Demjanjuk today before the second day of his trial in the country court in Munich. Demjanjuk goes on trial on charges of being an accessory to the murder of 27.900 Jews at a Nazi death camp, opening the final chapter of some 30 years of efforts to prosecute the retired Ohio autoworker.