'Last Nazi In US' Deported To Germany From Queens: White House
May 13, 2020 | News | No Comments
JACKSON HEIGHTS, QUEENS — A former Nazi labor camp guard — thought to be the last living in the United States – has been deported to Germany from his home in Queens, the White House announced Tuesday.
Jakiw Palij worked as a guard at Trawniki Labor Camp, where 6,000 prisoners were murdered on Nov. 3, 1943, in what was then German-occupied Poland, according to the Department of Justice. But the now-95-year-old man has been living out his post-war years in Jackson Heights.
Palij, born in what was then Poland but is now Ukraine, immigrated to the United States in 1949 and became a citizen in 1957. During his immigration, the former guard lied about his Nazi service and instead told the U.S. government he spent World War II working on a farm and in a factory, the White House said in a statement.
In 2001, Palij admitted to U.S. Department of Justice officials that he had in fact trained at the Nazi SS Training Camp in Trawniki in 1943 and later worked as a guard at the adjacent labor camp, according to the White House statement. That year, the same labor camp saw one of the largest massacres in Holocaust history when 6,000 Jewish children, women and men were shot dead.
“By serving as an armed guard in the Trawniki Labor Camp and preventing the escape of Jewish prisoners during his Nazi service, Palij played an indispensable role in ensuring the Trawniki Jewish victims met their fate at the hands of the Nazis,” the White House wrote.
A federal judge revoked Palij’s citizenship in 2003 based on his wartime activities, human rights abuses and postwar immigration fraud, according to the statement. He was ordered deported in 2004 and his administrative appeal was denied in 2005.
Palij himself himself has insisted he was coerced into working at the concentration camp. He told the New York Times in 2003 that Nazi occupiers “came and took me when I was 18.”
”We knew they would kill me and my family if I refused,” he told the newspaper. “I did it to save their lives, and I never even wore a Nazi uniform.”
Many believed Palij would live out the remainder of his life in his Jackson Heights duplex, but U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement Tuesday the U.S. “will never be a safe haven for those who have participated in atrocities, war crimes, and human rights abuses.”
“He had no right to citizenship or to even be in this country,” Sessions said.
Palij marks the 68th Nazi to be deported from the United States. Until now, he was the only remaining active case from the Nazi era pursued by the DOJ Office of Human Rights and Special Prosecutions.
Lead image: In this Monday, Aug. 20, 2018, frame from video, Jakiw Palij, a former Nazi concentration camp guard, is carried on a stretcher from his home into a waiting ambulance. Palij, the last Nazi war crimes suspect facing deportation from the U.S., was spirited early Tuesday morning to Germany, the White House said. (ABC via AP)
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