The World Jewish Congress, North America has called on the United States government to deport an accused Nazi war criminal living in New York City.
Jakiw Palij, 92, is alleged to have guarded the Trawinki death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943, where 6,000 Jews were murdered. He is the last accused Nazi concentration camp guard still known to be living in the United States.
US federal courts have concluded that Palij entered the United States illegally in 1949 after failing to disclose that he had worked at the Trawniki training camps for secret service troops who would carry out the extermination of Polish Jews.
A federal judge ordered Palij deported in 2004, but none of three European countries to which he could be sent will take him, Germany, Poland and Ukraine, agreed to take him.
In court filings, he has denied wrongdoing, claiming that he and other young men in his Polish hometown were coerced into working for the Nazi occupiers.
“It is nothing short of a travesty that a convicted Nazi war criminal who was ordered deported to either Germany, Poland or Ukraine, still resides peacefully and in freedom in the United States,’’ said Evelyn Sommer, Chair, World Jewish Congress, North America.
“Jakiw Palij, who was called an essential component in the evil machinery of annihilation by the Justice Department, was a guard at a death camp in Poland and should pay the price for his crimes. We urge the US State Department to take all necessary steps to have one of these countries agree to take Palij so that he can be deported and true justice can be served.”