Neighbors at first had little inkling that Jakiw Palij, 95, was anything other than another immigrant living out his life in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the world in New York City’s Queens borough. Except, every so often, someone would lob a brick through his window. On Monday night, he was deported to Germany, the coda to a 14-year fight to remove Palij, a former volunteer Nazi guard who is believed to have presided over the death camp Trawniki, reports the New York Times. Over the years, Palij’s hidden past became an open secret in the area. Residents had grown accustomed to regular protests by Jewish and other groups outside the two-story house, ever since investigators combing through Nazi records identified him in 1993.
In 2003, a federal judge stripped Palij of his U.S. citizenship after finding he had lied on naturalization forms by claiming he was laboring on his family’s farm in Poland and in a German factory during the war. He was ordered deported in 2004. The U.S. could not find a country willing to take him. That ended on Monday, when neighbors watched agape as Palij was wheeled from his home by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who removed him from the country he entered in 1949. “He was nothing more than a man who got out,” said Adam DiFilippo, 33, who lives on the block. “This man deserves what he gets.” The deportation was the result of a renewed push by the Trump administration, which had spent months pressuring Germany to accept Palij. “It’s always good to get final closure, no matter how inadequate it may seem,” said Peter Black, former chief historian of the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations, who identified Palij nearly three decades ago when poring through batches of Nazi records in Prague.