Jewish Students Protest Outside Home Of Former Nazi Guard

Never Again: Former Nazi guard Jakiw Palij was also subjected to protests outside his home in 2013. Image by YouTube

By Aiden Pink April 25, 2017

Jewish high school students protested on Monday outside the home of the last known Nazi concentration camp guard in the U.S.

The Queens, N.Y. home of Jakiw Palij, 92, was the site of signs and chants by students from the Rambam Mesivta on Long Island.

“It is outrageous that a Nazi who is involved in killing thousands of innocent men, women and children should be able to walk the same streets that we do,” student Benjamin Kattan, who helped organize the protest, told the New York Daily News.

Palij worked at the Treblinka concentration camp during World War II. He moved to the U.S. in 1949 and became a citizen in 1957. He was ordered to be deported in 2004, but no European country would take him.

“People will ask me, why not leave him alone? He was 20 years old when these crimes took place,” school dean Rabbi Zev Friedman told the Daily News. “I view him as a 20-year-old murderer that got away with crimes for 72 years, not a 92-year-old nice old man.”

“If Osama Bin Laden moved into the neighborhood, we wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, he’s an old man, leave him alone.’ He’s a murderer!”

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter at @aidenpink.

Aiden Pink is the Deputy News Editor for the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

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