Several dozen Jewish students from the Long Island Rambam yeshiva high school on Monday protested outside the Queens home of Jakiw Palij, last known Nazi concentration camp guard living in America, because no European country wants him extradited and tried.
The Polish-born Palij, 92, arrived in the US in 1949 and became a citizen in 1957. Justice Dept. officials in 2003 told a federal judge that Palij had worked at the Treblinka death camp in 1943, and was part of the murder of an estimated 6,000 Jews during his service.
In 2004, a federal judge revoked Palij’s American citizenship based on the fact that he had lied about his Nazi past on his petition. The judge made him available for deportation to Germany, Ukraine or Poland, to stand trial. But none of these countries wanted him back. He remained in a legal limbo, because US do not have jurisdiction over crimes he committed in Europe. So he stayed.
Rabbi Zev Friedman, the dean of Rambam yeshiva, who on occasion engages his students in political protest, told NY1 that Palij ” doesn’t belong in our country, he shouldn’t be getting police protection here, he shouldn’t be getting mail delivery here, he shouldn’t be getting the same rights that you and I have as citizens here.”
According to NY1, some of Palij’s neighbors yelled at Rabbi Friedman and his students to leave the old man alone, saying they had known him since childhood as this nice man who lived on their block.
One neighbor told The NY Daily News that he knew Palij was a Nazi: “You hear things. I wasn’t surprised since the protesters come every year. I see him sometimes. He’s old, you know? I try to help him sometimes. He usually stays inside. He’s a nice guy. He’s always been a nice guy to me.”
But Friedman insisted the nice old man for Queens has to pay for the crimes of the much younger man from Treblinka, suggesting Germany has the moral obligation to enforce justice in this case.
Palij was not at home for this week’s protest outside his house. There must be a place where ex-Nazis go for those Shoah memorial days.