America’s last known Nazi collaborator is deported to Germany

Palij later admitted to officials that he attended a Nazi SS training camp in Trawniki in German-occupied Poland and then served as an armed guard at its adjacent labor camp.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Trawniki camp was part of “Operation Reinhard,” the Nazi operation to murder the approximately two million Jews residing in German-occupied Poland.

Image: Jakiw Palij in 2003
Jakiw Palij in 2003.Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times/Redux / Redux file

On November 3, 1943, SS and police units shot to death around 6,000 Jewish inmates at the camp, killing almost all of its prisoners in a single massacre.

Palij has said he was forced to be a guard.

“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 statement said.

But because Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and other countries refused to take him, he continued living in limbo in the two-story, red brick home in Queens he shared with his wife, Maria, now 86. His continued presence there outraged the Jewish community, attracting frequent protests over the years that featured such chants as “your neighbor is a Nazi!”

Image: Protesters outside Jakiw Palij's home in 2017
Protesters gather outside the home of Jakiw Palij in New York City on April 24, 2017.Mike Segar / Reuters file

The White House statement added that the Trump administration conducted extensive negotiations with Germany to secure Palij’s deportation due to the fact he never held German citizenship.

Germany’s Foreign Office said its decision to accept Palij showed the country was accepting its “moral responsibility.”

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told German tabloid Bild that those who “committed the worst crimes on behalf of Germans” would be held accountable.

Germany’s Interior Ministry and Justice Ministry and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office did not immediately comment on where Palij would be taken in Germany and what exactly would happen to him. Local media reported Palij was transferred by ambulance to a nursing home.

German prosecutors have previously said it does not appear that there’s enough evidence to charge him with wartime crimes.

Palij’s deportation is the first for a Nazi war crimes suspect since Germany agreed in 2009 to take John Demjanjuk, a retired Ohio autoworker who was accused of serving as a Nazi guard.

He was convicted in 2011 of being an accessory to more than 28,000 killings and died 10 months later, at age 91, with his appeal pending.

Carlo Angerer reported from Mainz, Germany, and Matthew Devine and Kurt Chirbas from New York.