Suspected Nazi guard told to surrender to US immigration officials

The move comes a day after a US Supreme Court Justice denied the 89-year-old former autoworker's request to block the deportation.

Demjanjuk's son said his family did not intend to appeal that decision because "it does not make sense to appeal to other Supreme Court judges once the judge responsible for the relevant circuit has rejected the stay."

The family continues to attempt to block the extradition through court filings in Berlin and Munich.

A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesman would not confirm that the letter was delivered, or provide details as to when the deportation would take place.

"Following an order by a US immigration judge to remove John Demjanjuk, the US government has been working closely with the government of Germany to effectuate Demjanjuk's removal from the United States," Khaalid Walls said in a statement.

"US Immigration and Customs Enforcement will have no further comment until that has occurred."

The decision is the latest development in a decades-long saga over Demjanjuk's wartime actions.

In a dramatic twist last month, the octogenarian won an 11th-hour reprieve when a US federal appeals court stayed his deportation shortly after he was carried out of his suburban Cleveland, Ohio home in a wheelchair to be placed on a flight to Munich.

That respite was lifted last week when the court threw out an attempt to block deportation on health grounds. His family quickly submitted an appeal to the Supreme Court, which was rejected Thursday.

Looking to German courts

They also filed motions in Germany to block the extradition, but a Berlin court said Germany is not obliged to prevent the deportation, is not in a position to stop it and cannot send him back because of the pending charges in a Munich court.

Demjanjuk's family has appealed that decision and on Friday filed a motion in Munich to rescind the arrest warrant.

Born in Ukraine in 1920, Demjanjuk was a soldier in the Red Army when he was captured by the Nazis in the spring of 1942.

He was trained at Treblinka in Nazi-occupied Poland and served two years in the Sobibor and Majdanek camps, also in occupied Poland, and in Flossenburg in Bavaria, southern Germany, court filings showed.

Demjanjuk has always insisted that he was forced to work for the Nazis and had been mistaken by survivors for other cruel guards.

He immigrated to the United States in 1952 with his family, settling in Ohio, where he found work in the auto industry and changed his name from Ivan to John.

Condemned to death in Israel in 1988 after he was convicted of being the sadistic Nazi guard nicknamed "Ivan the Terrible," the verdict was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court because of doubts about his identity.

He was returned to the United States over strenuous objections from Holocaust survivors and Jewish groups, who argued there was sufficient evidence that he served as a death camp guard to warrant another trial.

Demjanjuk regained his US citizenship, which was first stripped in 1981, after an appeals court ruled in 1998 that the US government recklessly withheld exculpatory evidence.

The US government filed new charges a year later using fresh evidence that surfaced following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he was again stripped of his US citizenship in 2002.

Germany issued a warrant for Demjanjuk's arrest on March 11 on charges of assisting in the murder of 29,000 Jews at Sobibor.