Yakiv Palij

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Jakiw Palij ( Ukrainian Яків Палій , born August 16, 1923 in Piadyki , then Poland ; † January 9, 2019 in Ahlen ) was deployed as a volunteer of the SS in the Trawniki forced labor camp in eastern Poland.

Life

Jakiw Palij was born in 1923 in Piadyki , which then belonged to eastern Poland and is now in Ukraine , and was a Polish citizen . In 1941 he was trained as a volunteer of the SS in the Trawniki forced labor camp . According to US investigators, he was tasked with preventing prisoners from escaping. The American embassy said in a press release in 2018 that he had contributed to "inhumane living conditions" in the concentration camp. In a 2003 interview with the New York Times , Palij denied having been involved in war crimes : he had been forced to patrol bridges and rivers. According to the US Department of Justice, Palij served in the camp from 1943. He was part of a unit that "committed atrocities against Polish civilians and others" and was a member of the Streibel SS battalion .

Trawniki was part of the Reinhardt Nazi campaign for the systematic murder of European Jews. On November 3, 1943, SS and police units shot almost all of the camp's inmates: 6,000 people.

In 1944 the Trawniki camp was closed. According to court documents, Palij was already on the front with SS troops at this point.

In 1949, Palij fled to the United States, receiving American citizenship in 1957. He kept his work in the SS a secret. Instead, he claimed to have worked on his father's farm and in a German factory. In the USA Palij worked as a technical draftsman, later he was retired. Before he was deported, he lived in Queens, New York .

Determination and delivery

In 1993, another former camp guard informed the US authorities that Palij was living "somewhere in America". He could be found and admitted to investigating the US Department of Justice that he had given false information. “I would never have got my visa if I had told the truth. Everyone lied, ”said Palij at the time and admitted that he had served in Trawniki. However, he denied having been involved in war crimes. He only worked as a security guard because his family was threatened, he said. In a second questioning in 2001, Jakiw Palij signed a document in which he admitted that he was a security guard in Trawniki and a member of the Streibel battalion.

In 2003, a US court revoked his American citizenship after 46 years. Palij has been a stateless person since 2003 . In 2004 a US judge ordered Palij's deportation. However, it failed because neither Poland nor Ukraine nor Germany wanted to accept him.

There are hardly any facts about Palij's service in the SS. There is only evidence that he received training as a security guard and, according to other Trawniki, briefly guarded Jewish prisoners. He was once promoted to the rank of Oberwachmann . His unit fought against partisans in Poland and forced civilians to work on entrenchments when building defensive positions against the Red Army. In May 1945 he was in Saxony and then made his way to Bavaria. In 1949 he took the ship General Stuart Heintzelmann from Bremen to Boston . Investigations by the Würzburg public prosecutor's office from 2015 were discontinued in 2016 because neither direct independent involvement in homicides nor substantial aiding and abetting in homicides could be proven. The central office of the state justice administrations for the investigation of National Socialist crimes conducted the preliminary investigations and could not clarify in which unit Palij was deployed after the training and which service he performed.

His presence in the city of New York angered local politicians who were pressuring the US government to get him out of the country. The entire New York delegation to the US Congress signed a letter to the US State Department in July 2017 urging deportation. Palij was the last survivor of the Nazi war crimes suspect who lived in the United States.

In April 2018, dozens of people, including students from a Jewish high school, protested in front of the row house in Queens where Palij lived and demanded his deportation.

In August 2018 he was deported from his apartment in Queens to Germany. On the morning of August 21, 2018, a US military plane landed at Düsseldorf Airport . From there, Palij was taken to an elderly care facility in Ahlen by ambulance . He died there on January 9, 2019 at the age of 95.

Richard Grenell , US ambassador to Germany since May 8, 2018, said after Palij's deportation that he had raised the case at every meeting in Germany. In the new federal government ( Merkel IV cabinet ) there was a “new energy” for negotiations. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas declared that Germany, in whose name the worst injustice had been done under the Nazis, was facing up to its moral responsibility by accepting Palij. Der Spiegel commented: “There is a broad consensus in the USA in favor of deporting Nazi suspects like Palij. And Germany apparently wanted to do the USA a favor. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Corey Kilgannon: Accused Nazi Guard Speaks Out, Denying He Had Role in Atrocities . ( nytimes.com [accessed August 21, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Jakiv Palij: USA deport former concentration camp guards to Germany . In: Zeit Online . ( zeit.de [accessed on August 21, 2018]).
  3. ↑ a b Helene Bubrowski, Reiner Burger, Berlin / Düsseldorf: Jakiv Palij: America deports concentration camp guards to Germany . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed August 21, 2018]).
  4. ↑ usembassy.gov: Press release US Embassy Berlin
  5. ↑ tagesschau.de: USA deport ex-concentration camp guards to Germany. Retrieved on August 21, 2018 (German).
  6. ↑ Jakiw Palij: USA deport former concentration camp guards to Germany . ( handelsblatt.com [accessed on August 21, 2018]).
  7. ↑ America's last known Nazi collaborator is deported to Germany . In: NBC News . ( nbcnews.com [accessed August 21, 2018]).
  8. ↑ a b Alleged Nazi Labor Camp Guard Deported To Germany. Retrieved August 21, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Jakiw Palij: USA deport former concentration camp guards to Germany . ( handelsblatt.com [accessed on August 21, 2018]).
  10. ↑ a b c USA deport former concentration camp guards to Germany . In: handelsblatt.de . ( handelsblatt.com [accessed on August 21, 2018]).
  11. ↑ US deports 95-year-old former Nazi camp guard to Germany - The Boston Globe . In: BostonGlobe.com . ( bostonglobe.com [accessed August 22, 2018]).
  12. ↑ ulz: SS helper Jakiw Palij died. In: Spiegel Online . January 10, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020 .
  13. ↑ a b Klaus Wiegrefe, Jan Friedmann: Jakiw Palij: Why does Germany take in an aged Nazi assistant? In: Spiegel Online . August 24, 2018, accessed April 26, 2020 .
  14. ^ Klaus Wiegrefe: Holocaust: SS helper Jakiw Palij remains unpunished. In: Spiegel Online . November 3, 2018, accessed April 26, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Erin Durkin: 'It finally happened': the long fight to expel America's last known Nazi. August 22, 2018, accessed on August 22, 2018 .
  16. ↑ a b The USA want to deport the last Nazi functionary living there to Germany . In: Vice . May 23, 2018 ( vice.com [accessed August 22, 2018]).
  17. ↑ Jakiv Palij: USA deport former concentration camp guards to Germany . In: ZEIT ONLINE . ( zeit.de [accessed on August 21, 2018]).
  18. ↑ Washington Post, August 21, 2018
  19. ↑ Reiner Burger: Former SS henchman Jakiv Palij died. In: FAZ.net . January 10, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020 .
  20. ↑ USA deport former Nazi collaborator to Germany . In: aachener-nachrichten.de . ( aachener-nachrichten.de [accessed on August 21, 2018]).
  21. ↑ USA deport concentration camp guards to Germany . In: www.t-online.de . ( t-online.de [accessed on August 21, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Palij, Jakiw
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Палій, Яків (Ukrainian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ukrainian SS member
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Piadyki
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 2019
Place of death Awls