John Demjanjuk, an 89-year-old man being held in a Munich prison, will stand trial on Monday, accused of assisting in the murders of nearly 28,000 people.

Prosecutors in Germany say that Demjanjuk's crimes were committed more than 65 years ago as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Poland in 1943 and 1944 during the second world war.

However, Demjanjuk, a Ukranian national, insists that he was simply an unlucky captive of the Germans during the war. Following Germany's defeat, he emigrated to the United States in 1946 to escape a brutal past.

But hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their family members believe he was one of the death camp's brutal guards.

Al Jazeera's Harry Smith reports.