Jakiw Palij served the Nazis as a concentration camp overseer. For decades he had lived undetected in the United States. Now, the US has deported to the SS-helper to Germany.
An old man with a full beard and flat cap rises on Tuesday morning from a military aircraft at the airport of Düsseldorf. Thus, a diplomatic dispute between Germany and the United States ends.
It Jakiw Palij, 94 years, a native Pole, is today stateless. He was in 1941, the forced labourers and the training camp Trawniki near Lublin, to the accomplices of the SS has been formed. According to U.S. investigators, he should be in a labour camp Trawniki in the mass murder of 6000 Jews have been involved. After the war, wandered Palij in the United States and was at the point of entry, to be a simple farmer. As the decades later came his SS-membership to the light, deprived him of the US citizenship. Since 2005, they tried to deport him.
Moral Responsibility Of Germany
Germany had refused for years to take him in, because Palij is not a German citizen. Now, the Federal government, with the inclusion Palijs a clear sign, speaks of the “moral responsibility of Germany”.
Thus, Germany is on the demand of the American government, senators, members of Congress and representatives of the Jewish communities in the United States: they were all the argument that persons who have served the NS regime of injustice, not to Live out their lives unmolested in the United States.
Palij has lived for decades in the New York city borough of Queens
According to satisfied the White house said after the transfer of Palijs. President Trump paid tribute to the “comprehensive measures of his government in the deportation of this Kriesgsverbrechers from the United States”.
The Trawniki Men
Still dealing with the helper-is the SS volunteers is difficult. Many of the so-called Trawniki-men were in the extermination Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka camps directly involved in the Shoah, the murder of the Jews. They often came from Poland, the Ukraine or the Baltic countries. The most famous of the total of between 4,000 and 5,000 Trawniki-men John Demjanjuk, who was deported from the United States to Germany in 2009. Three years later, the Munich regional court convicted him for complicity in the murder of more than 28,000 people to five and a half years in prison. Before the judgment became final, died Demjanjuk 2012.
Charges in the case Palij uncertain
Whether it comes in the case Palij, nor to an indictment, is uncertain. The Prosecutor’s office of Würzburg launched in 2015 investigations against Palij, the procedure but in the absence of Evidence. Unlike in the case of Demjanjuk, no badge, no personnel file, to prove his participation in the Holocaust were found by Palij, so far, no documents. Palij has always maintained that the SS had forced him to the Trawniki service. “A transfer from the US to Germany will not change nothing to the evidence,” chief Prosecutor Jens Rommel clear in an interview with DW. He identified as the head of a Central point in Ludwisburg in national socialist crimes.
Prisoners in the former concentration camp at Trawniki in German-occupied Poland
Nevertheless, there is the legal possibility, Palij still an accessory to murder prove. The evidence here, that he was involved in a “systematic crimes”, as the overseer or the driver. That would be enough. However, especially in the case of the Trawniki men, it is difficult to detect what operations you have performed after their training.
“Our criminal law works are focused on the individual offender,” explains chief Prosecutor Jens Rommel. “Our goal is to determine what exactly the Individual is responsible, if the state commits crimes.”
Even now, there were no proceedings against Palij should be opened, will spend the earlier KZ-myrmidon his last years, probably in a German nursing home.
Watch the Video 03:41 live Now 03:41 Min. 
Share
Nazi Crimes: The Case Of Palij
Send Facebook Twitter google+ Tumblr VZ Mr. Wong Xing Newsvine Digg
Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2v6ks