Ex-Nazi camp guard deported from U.S. dies in nursing home in Germany

Jakiw Palij, a former Nazi concentration camp guard who was deported from the U.S. after a lengthy legal battle, has died in Germany in a nursing home at the age of 95, according to German officials.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Westfaelische Nachrichten newspapers quoted German officials as saying Palij died in elderly care home in the town of Ahlen

Palij, who was living in Queens in New York City when he was deported in 2018, had been stateless since a federal judge revoked his U.S. citizenship in 2003.

Born in Poland in 1923 as an ethnic Ukrainian, Palij was trained by the SS in the Trawniki concentration camp in southeastern Nazi-occupied Poland in 1941, according to Deutsche Welle. So-called "Trawniki men" went on to participate in the Holocaust as guards in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka concentration camps.

Palij had emigrated to the U.S. as a war refugee in 1949 and became a naturalized citizen in 1957.

He was tracked down in 2001 by the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigation, which hunted Nazi collaborators who had concealed their activities when emigrating to the U.S. At the time, he acknowledged his service during the war in a sworn statement, The Washington Post reported.

That, in turn, led District Judge Allyne R. Ross to strip Palij of his citizenship in 2003 for concealing his Nazi past, saying in her opinion that he "does not submit a single affidavit affirming his innocence."

A U.S. Justice Department statement at the time noted that Ross had found "that on November 3 and 4, 1943, 'in a brutal spate of killing,' other units 'slaughtered Trawniki's entire inmate population' of some 6,000 Jewish civilians.'"

"Judge Ross also found that by March 1944 Palij was serving in the Deployment Company, a unit that perpetrated numerous atrocities against Polish civilians and others," the DOJ statement said. "When Palij applied for an immigration visa to the United States in 1949, the judge held, he falsely claimed that he worked on his father's farm and then in Germany during the period when he was actually in Nazi service."

In 2003, Palij told the New York Times that he was forced into service and did not take part in any killings during the war. "I was never a collaborator," Palij said.

U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell, who noted Palij's death on Twitter, praised President Donald Trump for resolving the lengthy case in 2018.

In a statement at the time, U.S. officials indicated that Palij's deportation followed negotiations by “President Trump and his team” and “collaborative efforts with a key European ally,” Germany.

Germany had long refused to accept Palij because he never had Germany nationality.

In an interview with “Fox & Friends” shortly after Palow's deportation, Trump said he took the action after earlier presidents had not.

“I have a lot of Jewish friends who said to me about this man living in Queens — I grew up in Queens," Trump said. "And he was a man that — not just a prison guard. He was a prison guard that supervised the killing of many, many Jews. Many, many Jews. And he’s lived here for decades."

Upon deportation, Palij did not face any charges in Germany because German authorities indicated they did not have sufficient evidence to charge him. Instead, Palij, who arrived by military plane in Dusseldorf in 2018, was placed in a nursing home, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ex-Nazi camp guard deported from U.S. dies in nursing home in Germany