(21 Aug 2018) The last Nazi war crimes suspect facing deportation from the U.S. was taken from his New York City home on a stretcher and flown to Germany early Tuesday, following years of efforts to remove him from the United States.
The deportation of 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard Jakiw Palij came 25 years after investigators first confronted him about his World War II past and he acknowledged lying to get into the U.S., claiming he spent the war as a farmer and factory worker.
President Donald Trump "made it very clear" he wanted Palij out of the country and a new German government, which took office in March, brought "new energy" to seeing the matter through.
New York Assemblyman David Weprin, a Democrat, praised the President for his action saying "I've opposed President Trump on a number of issues but on this issue he did the right thing. And from what I understand it probably would not have happened if it wasn't for President Trump himself getting involved."
Palij lived quietly in the U.S. for years, as a draftsman and then as a retiree, until nearly three decades ago when investigators found his name on an old Nazi roster and a fellow former guard spilled the secret that he was "living somewhere in America."
Palij, an ethnic Ukrainian born in a part of Poland that is now Ukraine, said on his 1957 naturalization petition that he had Ukrainian citizenship. When investigators showed up at his door in 1993, he said: "I would never have received my visa if I told the truth. Everyone lied."
A judge stripped Palij's U.S. citizenship in 2003 for "participation in acts against Jewish civilians" while he was an armed guard at the Trawniki camp in Nazi-occupied Poland and was ordered deported a year later.
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