Jakiw Palij, 95, a former Nazi concentration camp guard, has been deported from the US to Germany. Palij had served as a guard at Trawniki, near Lublin, Poland. He may face prosecution for his actions in the Holocaust.
Members of New York’s congressional delegation urged the Trump administration to deport Palij, whose citizenship was revoked in 2003 because of his wartime activities, human rights abuses and immigration fraud. A federal court ruled that he had assisted in the persecution of prisoners, though it did not find him responsible for their deaths.
“I would never have received my visa if I told the truth,” Palij told Justice Department investigators in 1993. “Everyone lied.”
Palij subsequently admitted that he attended a Nazi SS training camp in German-occupied Poland and served as an armed guard at the adjacent forced-labor camp. The Trawniki camp was part of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi operation to murder the 2 million Jews residing in German-occupied Poland.
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