Demjanjuk was found guilty of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder, one for each person who died during the time he was ruled to have been a guard at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Presiding Judge Ralph Alt said the 91-year-old was a piece of the Nazis’ “machinery of destruction.” “The court is convinced that the defendant ... served as a guard at Sobibor from 27 March 1943 to mid September 1943,” Alt said, closing a trial that has lasted nearly 18 months.

Demjanjuk sat in a wheelchair in front of the judges as they announced their verdict, but showed no reaction. He earlier declined the opportunity to make a final statement to the court.

Charges of accessory to murder carry a maximum term of 15 years in Germany, which does not allow consecutive sentences for multiple counts of the same crime. Mounir el Motassadeq, a Moroccan convicted in 2006 of being an accessory to the murder of the 246 passengers and crew on the four jetliners used in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, was sentenced to 15 years.

There was no evidence that Demjanjuk committed a specific crime. The prosecution was based on the theory that if Demjanjuk was at the camp, he was a participant in the killing — the first time such a legal argument has been made in German courts.

Integral to the prosecution’s case was an SS identity card that allegedly shows a picture of a young Demjanjuk, and indicates he trained at the SS Trawniki camp and was posted to Sobibor.

Though court experts said the card appears genuine, the defense maintains it is a fake produced by the Soviet KGB.

The US Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations also has said the card is genuine, but documents unearthed by The Associated Press indicate that the FBI at one time had doubts similar to those aired by Demjanjuk’s defense about the evidence - though the material was never turned over to them.

Rudolf Salomon Cortissos, whose mother was gassed at Sobibor along with thousands of other Dutch Jews, cried softly in a back row of the courtroom, wiping his tears with a white handkerchief, as Alt somberly read out the names of the brothers, sisters and parents of people who joined the trial as co-plaintiffs, as allowed under German law.

“It’s very emotional — it doesn’t happen every day,” he said, adding that he was happy with the verdict and sentence. “For me it is satisfying,” he said.

It was not immediately clear how much credit Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, who has been stripped of his US citizenship and has been in custody in Germany since his deportation two years ago, would get for time served.

Cornelius Nestler, a lawyer for coplaintiffs, said he likely will serve three years at most, given the time he has already spent in German custody.

But he said he too was satisfied with the sentence, which came close to prosecutors’ call for a six-year term. That call took into account the defendant’s age, and time he already served in Israel in the 1980s.

The verdict won’t entirely end more than 30 years of legal wrangling. The defense has pledged to appeal any German conviction, and legal proceedings continue in the United States.