PRAGUE (AFP)---A Russian survivor of the Nazi death camp Sobibor has identified John Demjanjuk as one of the guards in what could be a turnaround in his ongoing murder trial, the Czech Radio said.   

Alexei Vaitsen, 87, was interviewed by the public broadcaster's Moscow correspondent and shown a photograph of Demjanjuk, under trial in Germany.   

"I remember him, I remember them all. He was a guard. I saw him leading a group of prisoners to work in a forest," said Vaitsen, a Ukrainian-origin Jew and veteran paratrooper, who is seriously ill after several heart attacks.   

Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, told Czech Radio the discovery was "great news" but said it had to be verified.   

Up to now there have been no living witnesses able to positively identify Demjanjuk, but the prosecution says it has an SS identity card proving he was at the Trawniki training camp for guards and that he was transferred to Sobibor.   

The 89-year-old Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was deported to Germany last May from the United States, where he emigrated after World War II.
   

He has been on trial in Munich since November 30, accused of being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews during his alleged time at Sobibor in occupied Poland in 1943.   

Vaitsen, who reportedly hardly ever leaves his home in Ryazan, southeast of Moscow, said he was unlikely to testify in Munich.   

"I don't think they need me. They have enough evidence against him," he told the radio. 

"I'm glad he was put on trial. But can you really call that a trial when he refuses to communicate with the judge? I would like a real trial for him, one that he couldn't escape again," said Vaitsen.   

Vaitsen lost his entire family in the war and escaped from Sobibor after a rebellion in late 1943, a year after he was taken there.   

He said he sorted the personal belongings of murdered prisoners in the camp.   

Demjanjuk, whose family says he is gravely ill, denies all charges but has so far declined to address the court.   

Prosecution lawyers are using testimony from survivors to prove that if Demjanjuk was a guard at the camp, he would have played an active role in the mass killings there.
   

The trial, likely to be the last major case dealing with war crimes by the Nazi regime, is due to last until at least May.