Secretary Of State Tillerson Urged To Deport Former Nazi Guard Living In NYC
Stubborn Hate: Decades after the Holocaust, many Poles hold strongly anti-Semitic views, a new poll shows. Image by getty images
(JTA) — A New York congressman has asked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to deport a former Nazi guard living in New York City.
Rep. Joseph Crowley, a Democrat, sent Tillerson a letter on Tuesday urging him to deport Jakiw Palij, 92, of Queens, who was a guard at the Trawniki concentration camp in occupied Poland.
“The United States has long acknowledged that Nazi crimes were beyond heinous, and I urge you to act quickly on this matter,” Crowley wrote, according to the New York Daily News. “If action isn’t taken, it could mean that this individual may never face any form of justice.”
Palij, who has lived in the United States as a war refugee since 1949, has claimed that he was forced into working as a guard and never actually killed anyone. His U.S. citizenship was revoked 13 years ago, but Poland, Germany and Ukraine all declined to take him.
Local Jewish students staged a protest outside of Palij’s home in the Jackson Heights neighborhood on Holocaust Remembrance Day in late April.
Crowley had sent similar letters to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly three weeks ago, the Daily News reported.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
