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Jakiw Palij has been stateless since a federal judge revoked his US citizenship in 2003. For years Germany refused to accept him as he never had German nationality. After arriving in Düsseldorf he was being taken to a care home for the elderly, German reports say. The US ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell, praised Germany's new government and President Donald Trump's "crucial leadership" in resolving the case.
Who is Jakiw Palij?
Authorities believed he was the last Nazi collaborator still living in the US, and his residence in the Queens area of New York City attracted protests from residents. Palij is said to have been born in an area of Poland that is now in Ukraine. In 1943 he went to the Trawniki SS training camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Trawniki was notorious because it trained thousands of civilians from the area who went on to become active as death camp guards at Sobibor, Treblinka and Belzec.
Palij, seen here in this 1949 US visa photo, denied involvement in Nazi crimes
Its most notorious camp guard was John Demjanjuk, who was convicted by a German court of being an accessory to 28,000 murders at Sobibor. He too was deported by the US, in 2009. Jews were sent to the camps as part of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to murder more than two million Jews in occupied Poland. Trawniki also housed a forced labour camp where more than 6,000 Jews were murdered on a single day - 3 November 1943. A White House statement said Palij served as an armed guard and had played an "indispensable role" in ensuring Jews were killed.
He arrived in the US in 1949 and was given citizenship in 1957. Although a US court ruled he had assisted in the persecution of prisoners, he was not found personally responsible for deaths. His deportation was ordered in 2004 after a judge said he had falsified his immigration application. Palij himself has denied collaborating with the Nazis. He told the New York Times in 2003 that he had never set foot in a camp and only agreed to work as a guard because he believed the Nazis would kill his family if he refused.
Why did deportation take so long?
Jakiw Palij was deported to Germany. Born in Poland, Palij immigrated to the U.S. in 1949 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1957. He hid his Nazi service during the U.S. immigration and naturalization process. Instead, he told immigration officials he spent World War II working on a farm and in a factory. President Donald Trump commended ICE’s decision to remove “this war criminal from United States soil,” the White House said in a statement. “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. Through extensive negotiations, President Trump and his team secured Palij’s deportation to Germany and advanced the United States’ collaborative efforts with a key European ally.”
In 2001, Palij admitted to the Department of Justice that he received training in 1943 at the Nazi SS Training Camp in Trawniki, in German-occupied Poland. According to court documents, men who trained in Trawniki took part in “Operation Reinhard,” code name for the Third Reich’s plan to murder Jews in Poland. He also served as an armed guard at the nearby Trawniki Labor Camp. Approximately 6,000 Jews – children, women, and men – who were held prisoner at the adjacent Trawniki Labor Camp were shot and killed on Nov. 3, 1943 in what is considered one of the single largest massacres of the Holocaust. As a guard, Palij prevented their escape and “played an indispensable role in ensuring that the Trawniki Jewish victims met their horrific fate at the hands of the Nazis.”
A federal judge in the U.S. revoked Palij’s U.S. citizenship in August 2003 “based on his wartime activities, human rights abuses, and postwar immigration fraud.” He was ordered to be deported in 2004. He appealed the judge’s decision and was denied in 2005. The U.S. government has “prioritized the identification, prosecution and deportation of Nazi war criminals since the 1970s,” the White House said. Anyone with information on foreign nationals or foreign nationals who are naturalized U.S. citizens and are suspected of taking part in human rights abuses or war crimes are asked to call the ICE Security Investigations tip line at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE. Or they can fill out the online tip form.
ICE’s Human Rights Violators & War Crimes Unit has four missions: To prevent the admission of foreign war crimes suspects, persecutors and human rights abusers into the United States; To identify and prosecute individuals who have been involved and/or responsible for the commission of human rights abuses across the globe; To remove, whenever possible, those offenders who are located in the United States; and to oversee the development of programs in response to the former President's Presidential Study Directive-10, the prevention of mass atrocities. ICE has arrested more than 275 people for human rights-related violations under various criminal and/or immigration statutes since fiscal year 2004. During that same period, ICE has also denied more than 139 people from getting entry visas to the U.S. and “created more than 66,000 subject records, which prevented identified human-rights violators from attempting to enter the United States.” It also obtained deportation orders for more than 590 known or suspected human rights violators from the U.S.
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Such a deportation agubnst the free will of this man is not justifiable with the known facts
Such a deportation agubnst the free will of this man is not justifiable with the known facts
Ahhhh, poor Nazi.
it is my understanding, that germans used ONLY VOLUNTEERS as civilian
labor camp guards. He VOLUNTEERED to serve as a murderer in camps in
which even children were being barbarically murdered whilst
(?) in his early 20s, ------he is not innocent. Then he lied about it. <<<<
that is the information presented.
Such a deportation agubnst the free will of this man is not justifiable with the known facts
Ahhhh, poor Nazi.
I see in you the danger to become very easily a Nazi with this mocking answer. I tell you what's one of the worst problems: The government of the USA - Donald Trump and his loyalists - threaten every citizen of the USA to be able to lose the US-americans citizenship. I remember in this context for example a German, who came to the USA in the age of some month and was deported from the USA to Germany in the age of 60, because he was made in an US-American hospital to a drug addict with a wrong medicamentation against pain and lost his drivers license in a police control. They found out he never was a naturalized citizen of the USA.
I guess I said very clear what I think about the Ucrainian Jakiv Palji (who was once a citizen of Poland, before he became an US-American) - but let me tell you: If you don't like to be seen as a Nazi on your own then find out what Werner von Braun had done before he had sent the first US-American to the moon, exhume his body and send the body of this Nazi back to Germany, if you don't like to live in a country, where the body of this Nazi is poisening the holy ground of the USA and the moon. What do you find now in your thoughts? Excuses for the deeds of this man, because he is famous and is well respected worldwide?
So let me say clearly: It's misuse of the victims of the Holocaust what the USA and Germany are doing in this case. I'm sure no one who lost people in the shoa because of the injustice of the Nazis thinks about that the world should sink down in injustice. As long as no one knows anything about a concrete murder in which this man was envolved - I'm nearly sure he was envolved, but no one knows really - I don't see any way, how it could be justifiable what the USA and Germany were doing in case of this man. The victims of the Holocaust never were on the side of any form of senseless revenge - the victims of the Holocaust always were on the side of justice. Justice is non-negotiable.
it is my understanding, that germans used ONLY VOLUNTEERS as civilian
labor camp guards. He VOLUNTEERED to serve as a murderer in camps in
which even children were being barbarically murdered whilst
(?) in his early 20s, ------he is not innocent. Then he lied about it. <<<<
that is the information presented.
Lots of people of foreign nations worked in the SS. ni 1943 were about 25% of the people of the SS no Germans. Other were perhaps naturalized Germans. After the war exclusoivley only real Germasn whi were merbso fthe SS were punished - anyone of any other nation. And lots of members of the SS - the most members - were not punished at all.
Such a deportation agubnst the free will of this man is not justifiable with the known facts
Ahhhh, poor Nazi.
I see in you the danger to become very easily a Nazi with this mocking answer. I tell you what's one of the worst problems: The government of the USA - Donald Trump and his loyalists - threaten every citizen of the USA to be able to lose the US-americans citizenship. I remember in this context for example a German, who came to the USA in the age of some month and was deported from the USA to Germany in the age of 60, because he was made in an US-American hospital to a drug addict with a wrong medicamentation against pain and lost his drivers license in a police control. They found out he never was a naturalized citizen of the USA.
I guess I said very clear what I think about the Ucrainian Jakiv Palji (who was once a citizen of Poland, before he became an US-American) - but let me tell you: If you don't like to be seen as a Nazi on your own then find out what Werner von Braun had done before he had sent the first US-American to the moon, exhume his body and send the body of this Nazi back to Germany, if you don't like to live in a country, where the body of this Nazi is poisening the holy ground of the USA and the moon. What do you find now in your thoughts? Excuses for the deeds of this man, because he is famous and is well respected worldwide?
So let me say clearly: It's misuse of the victims of the Holocaust what the USA and Germany are doing in this case. I'm sure no one who lost people in the shoa because of the injustice of the Nazis thinks about that the world should sink down in injustice. As long as no one knows anything about a concrete murder in which this man was envolved - I'm nearly sure he was envolved, but no one knows really - I don't see any way, how it could be justifiable what the USA and Germany were doing in case of this man. The victims of the Holocaust never were on the side of any form of senseless revenge - the victims of the Holocaust always were on the side of justice. Justice is non-negotiable.
You hate The American President so you think Nazis are OK.
Got it.
it is my understanding, that germans used ONLY VOLUNTEERS as civilian
labor camp guards. He VOLUNTEERED to serve as a murderer in camps in
which even children were being barbarically murdered whilst
(?) in his early 20s, ------he is not innocent. Then he lied about it. <<<<
that is the information presented.
Lots of people of foreign nations worked in the SS. ni 1943 were about 25% of the people of the SS no Germans. Other were perhaps naturalized Germans. After the war exclusoivley only real Germasn whi were merbso fthe SS were punished - anyone of any other nation. And lots of members of the SS - the most members - were not punished at all.
I did not know. Any Hindus? Buddhists? ----
lots of SUDANESE? There were lots of Nazis in
my area of the USA------I have no doubt that they could have been considered ARYANS by adolf.
The people of the USA in pre-revolutionary times
(my town was THAT OLD) originated from
merry old England ---AND GERMANY----and some
other little European spots-------there were Nazi sympathizers in England too. Adolf, no doubt
would have accepted HENRY FORD into his circle
of pals. and even THOMAS EDISON
