Germany’s foreign minister has said the country has a “moral obligation” to seek justice for victims of the Holocaust, after 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard, Jakiw Palij was deported from the US.
Heiko Maas said “there is no line under historical responsibility”, adding in a comment to German newspaper Bild that doing justice to the memory of Nazi atrocities “means standing by our moral obligation to the victims and the subsequent generations”.
Palij landed in the western German city of Dusseldorf on Tuesday.
The local government in Warendorf county, near Munster, indicated that Palij would be taken to a care facility in the town of Ahlen.
German prosecutors have previously said it does not appear that there is enough evidence to charge Palij with wartime crimes.
Now that he is in Germany, Efraim Zuroff, the head Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said he hoped prosecutors would revisit the case.
Palij lived quietly in the US for years, as a draughtsman and then as a pensioner, 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 told Justice Department investigators who showed up at his door in 1993: “I would never have received my visa if I told the truth. Everyone lied.”
A US judge stripped Palij of his citizenship in 2003 for “participation in acts against Jewish civilians” while an armed guard at the Trawniki camp in Nazi-occupied Poland and was ordered to be deported a year later.
But because Germany, Poland, Ukraine and other countries refused to take him, he continued living in limbo in the two-storey, 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.
According to the Justice Department, Palij served at Trawniki in 1943, the same year 6,000 prisoners in the camps and tens of thousands of other prisoners held in occupied Poland were rounded up and slaughtered.
Palij has admitted serving in Trawniki but denied any involvement in war crimes.
Last September, all 29 members of New York’s congressional delegation signed a letter urging the US State Department to follow through on his deportation.
The deportation came after weeks of diplomatic negotiations, which the White House said President Donald Trump had made a priority.
“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,” the White House said.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel