The last known former Nazi camp guard living in the United States was deported to Germany, an action that the White House trumpeted Tuesday in an apparent effort to show its harsh immigration enforcement policies are not just aimed at migrants on the border. The Justice Department said that Jakiw Palij, 95, was an armed guard at a Nazi death camp in Poland during World War II, and that he helped oversee the murder of thousands of prisoners during the Holocaust, including 6,000 Jews on a single day in 1943. Palij emigrated to New York in 1949 and became a U.S. citizen in 1957 after lying about his role in Nazi atrocities, according to the Justice Department. In 2001, however, he admitted lying about his past and was stripped of his citizenship and ordered deported in 2004. Removal efforts stalled because he was effectively stateless and Germany, Poland and Ukraine refused to take him in. On Monday, TV cameras were on hand in Queens, N.Y., as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wheeled Palij, who was bearded and wearing a cap, out of his brick home on a gurney. He said nothing to reporters and later was put on a plane to Dusseldorf. Advertisement Palij, who was born in what is now Ukraine, is the 68th former Nazi to be stripped of U.S. citizenship and deported since the late 1970s, according to the Justice Department. Several of those identified could not be deported because no country would accept them, and several died while awaiting deportation. Eli Rosenbaum, a Justice Department official who oversees the U.S. hunt for former Nazis, said the Palij case “sends yet another message of deterrence” to war criminals. “The passage of time — even many decades — will never weaken our government’s resolve,” he said. He described Palij as “the last person in the U.S. who was under a court order of removal on the basis of his participation in Nazi acts.” People pass by the residence of Nazi war crimes suspect Jakiw Palij in the Queens borough of New York on Tuesday. (Craig Ruttle / Associated Press) Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted his approval for the deportation: “Nazi prison guards have no place in the USA. We must stand firmly against hate, anti-Semitism and bigotry in all its forms. Good riddance to this war criminal.” The case inevitably had political ramifications since Palij was arrested the same day that Trump hailed ICE agents as heroes at the White House, and celebrated their efforts to deport undocumented migrants from Latin America, as he also demonized Democrats. In its statement, the White House took credit for finally expediting Palij’s deportation, which came after weeks of negotiations between the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, and German officials. “Despite a court ordering his deportation in 2004, past administrations were unsuccessful in removing Palij. To protect the promise of freedom for Holocaust survivors and their families, President Trump prioritized the removal of Palij,” it said. Advertisement Jakiw Palij in 1957. (U.S. Department of Justice) Grennell, speaking on a conference call organized by the White House, also praised Germany, which was under no obligation to take Palij in. “They saw this as a moral obligation, not so much a legal obligation,” he said. U.S. officials did not demand that Germany commit to taking legal action against him, officials said. Palij was little known compared to John Demjanjuk, a former guard at the Treblinka concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland whose case made headlines for years. Advertisement Demjanjuk was deported from the U.S. but he returned after his 1988 conviction in Germany and Israel for crimes against humanity was overturned by an Israeli court. He was deported again in 2009 to be tried in Munich, where he was found guilty. He died in 2012 while his case was being appealed. Palij was an armed guard at Treblinka on Nov. 3, 1943, when 6,000 Jewish children, women and men were shot to death in one of the biggest single massacres of the war, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Jewish laborers were brought in to burn and bury the corpses, after which they, too, were shot and incinerated. The latest from Washington » eli.stokols@latimes.com Advertisement @EliStokols UPDATES: 12:00 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with staff reporting. 7:40 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the deportation and about Jakiw Palij’s life. Advertisement This article was originally published at 1:25 a.m.<doc-sep>(CNN) — A former Nazi labor camp guard who has been living in the United States for decades has finally been deported to Germany after years of diplomatic wrangling, the White House announced on Tuesday. Jakiw Palij, who worked as a guard at the Trawniki Labor Camp, in what was then German-occupied Poland, had been living out his post-war years in Queens, New York City. Palij, 95, was born in what was then-Poland and now Ukraine, and immigrated to the US in 1949, becoming a citizen in 1957. The former Nazi guard lied to US immigration officials about his role in World War II, saying he worked on a farm and in a factory, the White House said in a statement. US Department of Justice via AP Jakiw Palij, pictured in 1957. Photograph courtesy US Justice Department. In 2001, Palij admitted to US Department of Justice officials that he had in fact trained and worked at the Trawniki Labor Camp in 1943. On November 3, 1943, around 6,000 Jewish prisoners at the camp were shot to death in one of the single largest massacres of the Holocaust, according to the White House statement. “By serving as an armed guard at the Trawniki Labor Camp and preventing the escape of Jewish prisoners during his Nazi service, Palij played an indispensable role in ensuring that the Trawniki Jewish victims met their horrific fate at the hands of the Nazis,” the White House added. In court filings, Palij has denied wrongdoing, claiming that he and other young men in his Polish hometown were coerced into working for the Nazi occupiers. In 2003, Palij’s US citizenship was revoked. The following year, a federal judge ordered that Palij be deported – but none of the European countries to which he could have been sent, would take him. 02:11 - Source: CNN Evan Perez confronts Nazi in Queens (2016) It had been believed that Palij would quietly live out his last years in a modest red-brick duplex in Jackson Heights, a diverse neighborhood of Queens. But in a statement on Tuesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions praised the work of the Justice Department’s best-known Nazi hunter, Eli Rosenbaum, and his team in successfully removing the 68th Nazi from the United States. Palij’s case represents the closing of an era – until now he was the only remaining active case from the Nazi era pursued by the Justice Department’s Office of Human Rights and Special Prosecutions. The atrocities of the Trawniki camp, where Palij worked, aren’t well known in part because the killing was thorough, historians say. One document researchers uncovered helped illustrate the extent of the killing. A soldier broke the butt of his rifle, which meant he was required to file a report so the German SS would issue him a new one. The report mentioned an operation that killed 4,000 people at Trawniki, mostly Jews. CNN’s Joe Sutton, Evan Perez, Alexander Rosen, Wesley Bruer, Jeremy Moorhead, Alex Lee and Josh Gaynor contributed to this report<doc-sep>The last Nazi war crimes suspect facing deportation from the US has been extradited to Germany, 25 years after investigators learned he was living in New York. Former concentration camp guard Jakiw Palij, 95, was taken from his home and flown to Dusseldorf early on Tuesday morning after years of diplomatic wrangling. Palij fled to the US following the Second World War, claiming to immigration officials upon arrival in 1949 that he had worked as a farmer in his native Poland. Recommended Former Auschwitz guard charged with accessory to genocide He concealed his past as a “willing helper” to Nazi Germany’s notorious SS paramilitary wing at Trawniki, a forced labour camp in occupied Poland where at least 12,000 Jews were murdered during the Second World War. Palij quietly lived in US as a draftsman and then retiree, until investigators found his name on an old Nazi roster and a fellow former guarded tipped them off that he was living in America. He told US Justice Department officials who showed up at his door in 1993: “I would never have received my visa if I told the truth. Everyone lied.” A judge stripped him of his US citizenship in 2003 for “participation in acts against Jewish civilians” while an armed guard at Trawniki. A court ordered Palij’s deportation the next year, but he continued to live in limbo in New York for 14 years because Germany, Poland and other countries refused to take him. His continued presence in Queens, where he shared a two-story house with 86-year-old wife Maria, outraged the Jewish community and drew frequent protests over the years, with demonstrators often shouting ”your neighbour is a Nazi”. According to the Justice Department, Palij worked at Trawniki in 1943, the year 6,000 prisoners at the camp were rounded up and shot in one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust. “By serving as an armed guard at the Trawniki labour camp and preventing the escape of Jewish prisoners during his Nazi service, Palij played an indispensable role in ensuring that the Trawniki Jewish victims met their horrific fate at the hands of the Nazis,” said the White House in a statement announcing his deportation. Palij has admitted serving in Trawniki but denied any involvement in war crimes. Heinrich Himmler shakes hands with new guard recruits at the Trawniki concentration camp in 1942 (AP) Last September, all 29 members of New York’s congressional delegation signed a letter urging the State Department to push through his deportation. Richard Grenell, the US ambassador who arrived in Germany earlier this year, said President Donald Trump – who is from New York – instructed him to make the issue a priority. He added the new German government, which took office in March, brought “new energy” to the matter. The ambassador told reporters that there were “difficult conversations” because Palij is not a German citizen and was stateless after losing his US citizenship, but “the moral obligation” of taking in “someone who served in the name of the German government was accepted.” It is unclear what will happen next, as German prosecutors have previously said there appeared to be insufficient evidence to charge Palij with war crimes. Germany’s foreign ministry said it was “sending a clear signal of Germany’s moral responsibility by taking in Palij” but gave no details on where he would be taken after his arrival in Dusseldorf. Local media reported Palij was being put in a long-term care facility near the city of Muenster. Efraim Zuroff, the head Nazi-hunter at Jewish human rights organisation the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said he hoped prosecutors would revisit the case. “Trawniki was a camp where people were trained to round up and murder the Jews in Poland, so there’s certainly a basis for some sort of prosecution,” he said, adding that the US Justice Department ”deserves a lot of credit” for sticking with the case. “The efforts invested by the United States in getting Palij deported are really noteworthy and I’m very happy to see that they finally met with success,” he added.​ Remembering the Holocaust Show all 16 1 /16 Remembering the Holocaust Remembering the Holocaust 119165.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119169.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119229.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119167.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119162.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119166.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119163.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119224.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119168.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119228.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119152.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119226.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119150.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119151.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119147.bin Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust 119231.bin Hannah Bills Palij entered the US in 1949 under the Displaced Persons Act, a law meant to help refugees from post-war Europe. He told immigration officials he was employed during the war as a woodworker, a farmer and a factory worker. He said he had never served in the military. In reality, officials say, he played an essential role in the Nazi programme to exterminate Jews in German-occupied Poland. According to the Justice Department, Palij served in a unit that “committed atrocities against Polish civilians and others” and then in the notorious SS Streibel Battalion, “a unit whose function was to round up and guard thousands of Polish civilian forced labourers”. After the war, Palij maintained friendships with other Nazi guards who came to the US under similar false pretences. In a coincidental twist, he and his wife purchased their home near LaGuardia airport in 1966 from a Polish Jewish couple who had survived the Holocaust and were unaware of his past. The Justice Department’s special Nazi-hunting unit started piecing together Palij’s past after a fellow Trawniki guard identified him to Canadian authorities in 1989. Officials confronted him in 1993 but it was not until a second interview in 2001 that he signed a document acknowledging he had been a guard at Trawniki and a member of the Streibel Battalion. Palij claimed at one point during the interview that he was threatened with death if he refused to work as a guard, saying: “If you don’t show up, boom boom.” Jakiw Palij pictured in Queens, New York, in 2003 after his past as a Nazi concentration camp guard came to light (AP) He is the first Nazi war crimes suspect to be deported since Germany agreed in 2009 to take John Demjanjuk, a retired Ohio mechanic who was accused of serving as a concentration camp guard. The Ukrainian-American was convicted in 2011 of being an accessory to more than 28,000 killings and died 10 months later, aged 91, with his appeal pending. Although Palij was the last Nazi suspect in the US with an outstanding deportation order, others remain in the country. Since 2017, Poland has been seeking the extradition of Ukrainian-born Michael Karkoc, an ex-commander in an SS-led unit which burned Polish villages and killed civilians during the war. The 99-year-old, who currently lives in Minneapolis, was the subject of a series of 2013 reports by the Associated Press that led Polish prosecutors to issue an arrest warrant for him. Earlier this year, US authorities requested opinions from medical experts on whether Karkoc was healthy enough to travel by plane and take part in a court trial. In addition to Karkoc, there are almost certainly other Nazis in the US who have not yet been identified or investigated by authorities. Some estimates put the number of Nazis who fled to the US after the Second World War at 10,000. The Justice Department has initiated legal proceedings against 137 suspects, with 67 of those being removed by deportation, extradition or voluntary departure. Of the rest, 28 died while their cases were pending and nine were ordered to leave but died in the US because no other country was willing to take them.<doc-sep>
Jakiw Palij, a 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard, was deported early Tuesday morning. He had been living on welfare in Queens, New York, until his deportation. He landed in Düsseldorf, Germany, on Tuesday. Palij worked at the Trawniki labor camp, where thousands of Jews were murdered in World War II. He was granted US citizenship in 1959 after lying about his Nazi service to immigration officers. A US judge ordered his deportation in 2004, but the order was enforced only this week. The US has deported a 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard who had been living in the US for almost 70 years. Jakiw Palij, who worked as a guard at a labor camp in German-occupied Poland during World War II, was seen exiting a plane in Düsseldorf, Germany, on Tuesday morning. He was then transferred to a stretcher and taken across the city in an ambulance. The New York Times reported in 2003 that he had had two strokes and was in frail health. He was deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement early Tuesday morning, the White House said in a press release. He had been living on welfare in Queens, New York, until his deportation, Germany's Bild newspaper reported. Palij exited the plane in Düsseldorf on Tuesday after being deported from the US. BILD EXCLUSIVE/Sebastian Karadshow/Josef Frank Weiser Palij was born in a part of Poland that is now part of Ukraine. He trained at the Nazi SS training camp in Trawniki, in German-occupied Poland, in 1943 and served as an armed guard at Trawniki labor camp, the White House said. The camp is the site of one of the largest massacres of the Holocaust. SS and police officers shot at least 6,000 Jewish inmates at the camp and a nearby subcamp in a single day, on November 3, 1943, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Palij's house in Queens, New York, as pictured in November. Kathy Willens/AP Palij immigrated to the US in 1949 as a 26-year-old war refugee and was granted US citizenship in 1959. He lied about his Nazi service during his immigration and naturalization process, saying instead that he spent World War II working in a farm and in a factory, the White House said. In 2003, a federal judge revoked Palij's US citizenship for lying in his immigration process. A US judge ordered for his deportation in 2004, but it was implemented only this week. Palij told The New York Times in 2003 that he was "never a collaborator," claiming instead that his role was to guard bridges and rivers. He also said he joined the Nazis only to save his family. ''They came and took me when I was 18," he said. "We knew they would kill me and my family if I refused. I did it to save their lives, and I never even wore a Nazi uniform. They made us wear gray guards' uniforms and had us guarding bridges and rivers.'' But Eli Rosenbaum, the director of a special investigation unit for the Justice Department, said at the time that Palij was "very loyal and very capable and served until April 1945, the last weeks of the war, while other soldiers were deserting right and left." A protest outside Palij's house in Queens in November. Kathy Willens/AP Palij also said in 2003: "Let them come and get me. I'm not running. What will they do? Shoot me? Put me in the electric chair? Where are they going to deport me to? What country is going to take an 80-year-old man in poor health?'' Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement on Tuesday: "The United States will never be a safe haven for those who have participated in atrocities, war crimes, and human-rights abuses." Palij's case will now be part of an investigation at a Nazi crimes investigation unit in Ludwigsburg, Germany, Bild reported. Germany has jailed former Nazi camp guards, despite their old age, in recent years. Oskar Groening, 96, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2015 but died this past March before he could serve his sentence.