FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM NOVEMBER 16, 2017 • THE QUEENS COURIER 11
Rally demands that Jackson Hts. Nazi be deported
BY ANGELA MATUA
amatua@qns.com / @Angela Matua
Th e last remaining adjudicated Nazi war
criminal lives in Jackson Heights and a
group of students and staff from a Long
Island Jewish high school rallied in front of
the man’s house on Nov. 9 to make it clear
they wanted him out of the country.
About 160 students and staff from
Rambam Mesivta in Lawrence stood
across the street from 33-11 89th Pl., where
Jakiw Palij has lived in the home for years.
According to Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman,
members of the school have been showing
up to the house for 13 years to protest.
Th e high school students chanted “no
Palij in the USA” and “your time is up”
while holding signs and carrying a large
American fl ag that was draped on top of a
police barricade.
Th e group decided to rally today because
it is the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht
or the Night of Broken Glass. Nazi’s began
their “campaign of terror” in Germany on
this day, beating Jews, vandalizing synagogues
and shattering glass in Jewish institutions
and stores.
Palij, 94, served as a guard at the
Trawniki camp in Nazi-occupied Poland
where at least 6,000 Jews were shot to
death on Nov. 3, 1943, according to the
Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Palij, who offi cially became a U.S. citizen
in 1957 aft er emigrating here eight
years earlier at the age of 26, omitted his
role in the war when applying for citizenship.
His citizenship was revoked in 2003
when offi cials discovered who he was but
the German, Ukraine and Polish governments
refuse to accept him.
“Why should a veteran or Holocaust
survivor walk the same streets as this
Nazi?” said Friedman. “Th ere is a murderer
living in your city. He would kill everyone
who didn’t look like him.”
In August, Congressman Joe Crowley
wrote a letter to Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson calling on the State Department
to deport him. Students from Rambam
Mesivta read letters from a variety of elected
offi cials who have supported deporting
Palij. Crowley’s letter was signed by every
member of New York’s congress.
Elected offi cials and Queens residents
have for years called for Palij to be deported.
Th e 94-year-old told the New York
Post in 2013 that he was forced to become
a guard along with other teenagers.
“If you tried to run away, they take your
family and shoot all of them,” he told the
Post. “I am not SS. I have nothing to do
with SS.”
Th ough federal prosecutors do not
accuse him of personally killing people in
the camp, they argue that he forced Jews
to work in the camp and prevented then
from escaping.
Eli M. Rosenbaum, director of a special
investigation unit for the Justice
Department, called him ”an essential
component in the machinery of annihilation”
in 2003.
Palij, who worked as a draft sman in the
United States, lives in an apartment on
89th Street. Th ough he was granted Social
Security benefi ts at one point, a spokesperson
for Crowley said he no longer
receives them.
Assemblyman David Weprin attended
the rally and said it was especially pertinent
that they gather so close to Veteran’s
Day.
“We’re here today to say that it is about
time for Jakiw Palij to get out of here,”
he said. “Th ousands of young American
servicemen and women fought and died
to expunge the evil of Nazism from the
world and it is time that we removed the
Nazi from New York.”
According to Hillel Goldman, the associate
principle of Rambam Mesivta, Palij has
not been deported because of “red tape.”
“It’s really up to the other countries like
Poland, Ukraine and Germany to take
him in,” he said. “Th is Nazi has lived off
the fat of the American land. Let today
be the fi nal wave that breaks the dam of
indiff erence.”
As two school buses stopped in front of
Palij’s house, students and staff piled in
to be transported to the German consulate
in Manhattan where they would make
the case as to why Germany should take
him back.
Th ough the Holocaust occurred more
than 70 years ago, Goldman believes “justice
has no expiration date.”
Photos by Angela Matua/QNS
Students and staff from a Long Island high school demanded that Nazi guard Jakiw Palij be deported
from Jackson Heights.
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