US finally rids itself of Nazi war crimes suspect Palij
Pressure from Trump brings an end to the 13-year battle to deport 95-year-old to Germany
A SUSPECTED Nazi war criminal has been deported from the US, bringing to an end a 13-year stand-off in which no country wanted to take him in.
Jakiw Palij, 95, was removed from his New York home and flown to Düsseldorf early yesterday, after Germany finally agreed to accept him.
It is thought unlikely he will face prosecution over his alleged crimes because of insufficient evidence.
Mr Palij was stripped of his US citizenship in 2003 after he admitted serving as a volunteer guard at Trawniki concentration camp in occupied Poland, where thousands of Jews were put to death. He was ordered to be deported in 2005 but no country would agree to take him. Germany refused because he was not a German citizen and his crimes were not committed in Germany. He was born Polish, but Poland refused to take him because his birthplace became Ukrainian territory after the war. Ukraine rejected him as he was never Ukrainian. With no country agreeing to accept him, he continued living in the New York borough of Queens for 13 years.
Germany finally agreed to take him because of its “moral responsibility” for the crimes of the Nazis, Heiko Maas, the foreign minister, said. “The responsibility that comes from our history includes the uncovering and honest appraisal of the crimes of the Nazi reign of terror,” he told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.
“It is from this conviction that we accept our responsibility to the victims of National Socialism and to our international partners – even if this sometimes requires difficult political considerations.
“The guilt of those who committed the worst crimes in history in the name of Germany does not pass,” he told Bild newspaper separately. “It still hurts.”
Germany’s decision to take Mr Palij follows intense lobbying by the Trump administration, which had taken up the case more forcefully than its predecessors. Richard Grenell, the US ambassador to Germany, thanked Angela Merkel’s government for agreeing to a “fresh start in the case”. He wrote on Twitter: “President Trump’s instructions were clear and his leadership crucial to getting a former Nazi guard deported.”
The White House said: “The United States will not tolerate anyone who has supported Nazi crimes or other human rights abuses, and these people will not find refuge on American soil.”
Mr Palij emigrated to the US in 1949, and became an American citizen in 1957 after claiming he had spent the war working as a farmer and factory worker under Nazi occupation.
But investigators found his name in Nazi records and Mr Palij later admitted he had lied, saying: “I would never have received my visa if I told the truth. Everyone lied.”
He admitted being in the notorious
‘We will not tolerate anyone who has supported Nazi crimes. These people will not find refuge on American soil’
Trawniki men: a group of local volunteers trained by the SS to help guard concentration camps. The volunteers were trained at Trawniki concentration camp in occupied Poland, where Jewish forced labourers were imprisoned under horrific conditions that led to the deaths of many. Mr Palij says he was not involved in killings, but guarded “bridges and rivers” under the threat of death if he refused.
US prosecutors allege that by guarding the camp he was an accessary to the massacre of more than 10,000 Jewish inmates. The camp was liquidated in 1943.
German prosecutors closed an investigation against him several years ago because they concluded there was not enough documentary evidence to link him to the Trawniki massacre or other war crimes.