To all the people who write that he was an old man, or he joined the SS when he was young or we don’t “know” that he was a murderer; understand that all Trawniki SS men were volunteers. The German SS men prized them for their savagery and their enthusiasm. When you join a criminal organization, and make no mistake, that’s what the SS was, you become part of a criminal conspiracy. It took 14 years to deport him. More due process than his victims ever received. You don’t believe? Try reading some real history, not some alternate universe made up neo-nazi nonsense. Read General Eisenhower’s orders regarding the filming and documentation of German atrocities. We should never forget nor give in to the lie that there was no Holocaust.
31
Deporting a 95 year old man who has lived peacefully in the United States for decades, absent any proof that he harmed (let alone murdered) anyone makes little sense to me. Where is the due process?
In the absence of evidence to prove his personal involvement in the atrocities of the Holocaust, we can only assume (consistent with the presumption of innocence) that he had no involvement in committing the crimes.
He was a guard at a camp where murders happened to be committed - that hardly makes him a murderer.
10
It makes him an accomplice to murder.
23
Sending him to Germany is not a punishment. He will be cared for better than he would be here, all at the state's expense. At age 95, he will not live long. His wife is dead, but his memories, good and bad, will be with him.
7
As an American Jew from Los Angeles, I grew up with Holocaust survivors and their stories. Yes, awful all around. But even I am conflicted about sending him back. He's a 95 year old man.
Hopefully it wont take this long to convict #45...
8
I’m sure if the Israelis thought they could convict him, they would have brought him to trial. Why with all the problems facing this administration with our allies would this be the most important thing to bring up constantly? He’s not going to stand trial over there. I suppose this is going to be as good as it gets for this administrations foreign policy achievements.
3
There is no indication that Mr. Palij poses any harm to society. Even if he felt no remorse, not only can you not hope to reform an elderly Nazi by imprisoning him among other murderers, but at 95, you have little time to do so. This is just another instance of socially sanctioned revenge, one of the most vile animal instincts. It's barbaric. The considerable resources needed to produce this outcome would have been better spent in understanding and preventing the complex factors that led to his actions. Look around. Such insight would be invaluable here and now, 70 years later in the United States.
16
Jakiw Palij is an ethnic Ukrainian, as such, his native language was Ukrainian and he could not have a 'thick Polish' accent.
New York Times please read the history of the Trawniki Men - described by the US Holocaust Museum as Ukrainians.
Stop feeding anti-Polish sentiment.
15
@manhattanite7 The borders between Poland and Ukraine were not fixed. You could be Polish one decade and Ukrainian the next. If he spoke Polish he could be either. If he was Roman Catholic he could be either. But if he spoke only Ukrainian or Russian and was Eastern Orthodox he was not Polish. His "thick Polish" accent could be a "thick Slavic" accent, and he was trapped in a war zone, trying to survive where millions died from the Nazi invasion, no matter their accent or ethnicity.
6
Let's remember that the "fine people" who march and live under the Nazi insignia today condone this man - not as a 95-year-old yard-cleaning neighbor but as the 20-something volunteer who contributed to the extermination of countless human beings in the name of "racial purity."
Luckily, as evidenced by the overall tone of the reactions cited here, that worldview is far from the norm. But it's out there, it always will be and occasionally it will have an artful advocate.
13
Yes he does get what he deserves. But justice delayed is not justice at all. The man was carried out on a stretcher and put on a plane to Germany. He looked like would not even make the trip alive. IN Germany he is being placed in a nursing home. I mean its not Spandau. Should we have stood up against the wall and shot him. I guess we did make his life difficult for the last 17 years.
Its kinda like shooting a dead man.
5
Never forget; never forgive.
17
As stated in this article, Jakiw Palij "was born in a part of Poland that is now part of Ukraine"; worked "on his family’s farm in Poland"; and spoke with a "thick Polish accent." Readers might assume from this that Mr. Palij is himself Polish, when in fact he is ethnically Ukrainian. The Germans did not recruit ethnic Poles as concentration or death camp guards.
14
@Charles Chotkowski
Because the borders changed often he could still be born in Poland and then be a citizen of Ukraine. Germans needed their soldiers to fight the Russians and recruited anyone they could.
2
The world needs also to confront the many millions of Russians killed by the Bolsheviks. There should be a global hunt for those responsible.
9
It's something at least and he knows it, even if very little compared to the evil he contributed to.
14
Jakiw Palij fell for the German Reich’s fake news and believed that Jewish people were “bad hombres” who were responsible for Germany’s economic collapse and the rise of communism.
He was an 18-year old who believed in Hitler’s set of alternate facts. Once he became an SS guard, if he realized that he had made a mistake, he would not have been able to quit because he would have been killed.
If he was the sort of cold-blooded fanatic who continued to believe the Reich’s fake news in the face of the arrival of perfectly ordinary and harmless people to the camp, then he was a man who lacked a human heart. But we don’t know which he was—a man who did evil to survive or a man who did evil with joy.
All in all, the story of Jakiw Palij only makes me feel very sad. The horror of the Holocaust; the horror of human inhumanity.
The impulse to take joy from his deportation strikes me as being too close to the impulse to take joy in any cruelty to another human. The cycle of violence is spun by many forces—and one of those forces is righteous revenge.
70
@Heather
Your comment is beautiful. On the same spectrum, although of course not as extreme, is the story of the investigations of misdeeds by people involved in the Trump presidential campaign. Each confirmation of criminal activity is not a "victory" nor should the celebration be unbridled if Congress is freed to serve justice and the Constitution this November, as the evidence encompasses Mr. Trump himself. It would be a first step toward healing, of course, but there's nothing happy about verifying that terrible injustices have been done.
7
@Heather I found the last comment particularly insightful... some of the forces at work in the joy of his deportation are the same that led to the Holocaust and other similar events. It's sad that humanity can't really move past it and perhaps we never will.
9
I’m sure there were people who chose to quit and be killed rather than participate in the slaughter of scores of innocents.
10
As the comments remind us, if you can stall things long enough, some people forget and others forgive. A new generation comes along that cannot believe things were really that bad. That's human nature I suppose, but why is the Trump administration interested in justice?
8
Understand that many people feel this is justice and it probably is if that involves retribution for his actions. Please watch this video from BrightVibes to get a different perspective on how one person, who was there, shows how she has found forgiveness to be her path.
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook....
2
I am not Jewish and so I can never understand what they as a people have suffered and continue to suffer today. However, I feel there is more to this than meets the eye - a political manoeuvre of sorts. Why is a 95 year old man being deported now? You can say that "justice" was served but I feel there is an element of mob mentality and the moral outrage of today that led to this. How is this man a target vs. the Nazis that walk in broad daylight today? Must there really be so much bitterness and unwillingness to let this go that a 95 year old man is basically being forced from his home? It is likely that some of the people fighting for his deportation were children or perhaps weren't even born when he was 18. It seems contradictory - God is all about mercy and forgiveness, no matter how heinous the sin.
And, he was 18. I am not too much older now and I feel like a completely different person, and will likely change even more in the next few years. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. I think if some of the commenters here were back in Nazi Germany, myself included, I think more than a few of us would have been a part of it too - whether through fear or the effects of mob mentality and peer pressure that still prevail today.
25
@K When I was 11 years old my dad who had survived the Final Solution asked me to watch a broadcast of the Eichmann trial. Eichmann was 56 years old then and looked like a bookkeeper. To my eyes he was ancient. I couldn't understand how an old man could be held responsible for something that happened 17 years ago. Now I am 68 and I do understand how artificial time and age are. A money debt not prosecuted expires in 6 years in NYS. Time does not end the guilt debt created by mass murder. That kind of debt cannot be satisfied but the debtor cannot be allowed to completely escape justice. If life is important murder of innocents has consequences. You correctly point out that an 18 year old changes with time but nonethess he or she is always the same individual and fully responsible serious choices that have been made.
27
Does anyone read?
In 2003, a federal judge stripped Mr. Palij of his Americancitizenship after finding he had lied on his naturalization forms by claiming he was laboring on his family’s farm in Poland and in a German factory during the war.
5
@KS Yes, I do read. The technical reason for his deportation does not diminish anything I talked about.
ll happen to this guy in Germany? It's reported that on arrival there he was taken to a nursing home? If there is not to be a trial, what's the point (besides chest-thumping about something "Obama tried to do but failed")?
7
Attempts were made to deport him after a federal judge stripped Mr. Palij of his American citizenship in 2003 after finding he had lied on his naturalization forms by claiming he was laboring on his family’s farm in Poland and in a German factory during the war.
4
Germany loves prosecuting non-Germans for war crimes. They can spread the blame around. Meanwhile German war criminals can live in Germany without fear.
8
Which non-Germans have been unlawfully prosecuted in Germany whereas which German war-criminals live unbothered in Germany? Unfortunately, all that is happening to this case is that he will be put into a senior home in Germany as there is insufficient evidence to prosecute him even though the German Constitutional Court has significantly extended the accountabilities of anyone who has worked in concentration camps w/o requiring proof of actually participating in the actual killings.
2
We do the exact same thing. Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz are still breathing, but they shouldn't be.
A chilling reminder, to paraphrase Faulkner, that the past isn’t dead. It shapes us, haunts us, is all around us and is in our midst—it even walks amongst us. May this event serve as a powerful reminder that we never forget the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. May this teach us to learn history not for the purposes of passing a standardized test, but for making the world more tolerant, thoughtful, just, and moral.
16
I'm not sure justice was done here at all. For one thing, there isn't enough evidence to even be sure of his role in Germany, or whether he might have been forced to take on a role of a guard (by the threat of death himself). Second, he spent the majority of his life in the U.S. and at 95 is escorted most likely to a comfortable nursing facility just when he likely needs it. How many not suspected of a crime get this? And nobody seems to even know the real story of his role in Nazi Germany. It's curious, but a mystery, that a neighbor often saw him crying. That would have been an interesting question to ask him. Given that he was not prosecuted, I really don't see why the government felt justified in spending all the years of effort and time deporting him, especially with the ambulance aircraft to boot. Seems like he won all around. Now he gets to spend his final days in security, safety, and comfort. Did he also get to sell his house first?
8
We like to think that some people are evil and remain so their whole lives, no matter what the societal structure around them. But the truth is that every one of us is capable of evil, given the opportunity or constraints on us. I wonder where each of us would draw the line of what we would do in a totalitarian society. Not a comforting thought. So now this 95 year old war criminal will live in shame in Germany, just as he was living out his days in shame in Queens. Once identified publicly, this man had to confront himself. I does not matter if he lives in Germany or elsewhere. Booting him out just makes us feel virtuous.
21
@voltairesmistress
Simply put: This was justice for a man who committed terrible acts against his fellow man. When a murder is committed in the U.S. we continue to hunt for the killer, no matter how long it takes. The killer must be brought to justice. After he pays for his crime, he can work at rehabilitation.
12
He can be both guilty and a scapegoat simultaneously... they aren't mutually exclusive.
18
Ridiculous.
Another self-serving exploitation of the precious souls lost in WWII. This poor guy occupied the lowest possible station in the German command and had nothing to do with acts of war.
The hysteria of revenge landed on him only because he's still alive -- millions of others, now dead, were infinitely more culpable and infinitely further up the chain of command.
26
I'm surprised that American neo-nazis don't dnt adopt him as an act of solidarity.
4
I wrote a comment late Tuesday night after reading all
of the comments on an earlier article concerning Mr. Palij.
In it I noted two things:
1) Is there any proof that Mr. Palij killed or beat anyone ?
2) Why are people allowed to make comments that he
should be put in a 'cattle car', executed...without trial
when the New York Times has failed to show exactly what crimes he is said to have committed.
3) He should not have been permitted to come to America
but he still has a right to a trial before being condemned
not to mention how many high level Nazis and known killers served a few years in prison and went on their way.
Where is the the desire for a fair trial in many of the published comments ?
22
@John Brown He was deported because he lied on an immigration form. His U.S. citizenship was revoked and therefore he was eligible to be deported. It took 15 years for this process to be completed. He had his day in court. Being deported was a much better sentence than those who were killed under his watch.
20
From the article:
In 2003, a federal judge stripped Mr. Palij of his Americancitizenship after finding he had lied on his naturalization forms by claiming he was laboring on his family’s farm in Poland and in a German factory during the war.
And:
Mr. Palij, a former volunteer Nazi guard who is believed to have presided over the death camp Trawniki.
15
I found it amazing that many NYT readers are against punishing an SS guard and mass murderer merely because he escaped justice for decades. Yet they cheer when a statue is torn down! Both are clear examples of symbolic justice at least!
12
WW 2 was the first time in history that soldiers, generals, and political leaders that lost a war were actually prosecuted. What about Hiroshima or Nagasaki? How many innocents were evaporated? We did not prosecute those involved in the Manhattan project. Truman was not executed. What about Obama's kill list. What about HRC asking if we could not do a drone strike on Julian Assange. I would like to see the evidence first before I say that this 95 yr old man deserves more punishment. He may not have been behind bars, but I am sure he has suffered. To be part of the system that murdered millions and then as you get close to meeting your maker worrying that all those stories of hell and eternal damnation might be true... He is suffering. At 95 what can prison do to him... At his age lethal injection is a blessing. He is being tortured each day as his life ends. Tick Tock. Tick Tock.
5
@Mark
There is no statute of limitations on murder.
12
"...sitting on that small back staircase, silently crying."
Yes, he was probably thinking about all the Jews that got away.
I have no compassion for anyone who participated in Hitler's Final Solution. The depths of human deprivation needed to carry out the most horrendous crimes against humanity is not something that can be overlooked or pitied.
Genocide has existed since the beginning of mankind. What sets Nazi Germany apart from the rest of the killer regimes of history, is the extent to which they went to achieve their goal of eradication of the Jewish race. They created an industry of death. A precision killing machine that operated around the clock all across Eastern Europe. Like any German industry, they kept meticulous records of their production of ashes and graves filled. They knew well what they were doing and planned to show the world that they alone were able to deal with "the Jewish Problem" once and for all. Hitler thought the world would be grateful.
There will soon come a time when there will no longer be survivors on either side to tell their story. The victims histories have been well documented.
The perpetrators owe it to history and the millions who perished, to come clean about what they did and how they came to do it, no matter how distant their crimes.
We must never forget.
49
Thank you Larry for your well written and thoughtful/meaningful comments..I appreciate the wisdom, care, and sadness it conjured up.
11
@Larry
and IMB provided their record system
2
The photo at the lead is absurd.
I can see why they kicked the 95 year old Nazi out of America. People were afraid of him. Even though he was 95 years old they still saw him as a guy who killed innocent people. The 95 year old states that he feared for his family’s life if he didn’t be apart of the Nazi. He could of tried to find another way than to join them. To be honest he deserved and didn’t deserve of what he got. He deserved it because he killed a lot of innocent people and he didn’t deserved it because he could of have changed. But safety come first and no one know someone what goes through his head.
1
Please send him to Israel.
8
He lived just a few blocks from me. That neighbors and local groups were aware of his past and objected to his presence is very disturbing--and also that his deportation took so long. But I can't help but wonder what other political calculations went into making this move at this time.
14
The "cut the guy some slack, we're all capable of evil" argument sounds more like a self-congratulatory college philosophy thesis than an actual salient point. Just because everyone is capable of evil doesn't mean everyone commits evil. Trying to generalize the entire human race as potentially evil is pointless - we still have to hold accountable those who actually commit evil.
34
How many of us have not regretted something we did as an 18 year old?
Did he really "choose" to serve, any more than boys of 13 or 14 years old choose to serve in Africa? (In 2007, it was estimated that approximately 35,500 children were being used for military purposes in Africa's most intense conflicts in North Sudan/Darfur, South Sudan, Central African Republic and Nigeria).
I am not condoning what he may have done. Yet, I can't see an 18-20 year old in charge of the decision making at a concentration camp. He wasn't free to choose.
And carting of a 95 year old from a home he has known for many years, sending him to another country, is this really "justice"? I fear not. Does it undue what was done 75 years ago? Not at all. Just another scape goat from WWII. Can anyone put yourself in his shoes at 18 and say you would have done something differently, if you believed it would help your family?
34
@Steve, setting aside for a moment your defense of a Nazi, he also lied on his immigration application. Shouldn't that make him an illegal alien in the eyes of Trumpists?
13
@Steve Indeed. It leads to the nonsensical situation that if they really wanted to be 'just' then they should have put all the Germans over 85 in jail. War is hell, and in it, horrible things always happen.
5
Is there a way to condemn evil while still recognizing the fallibility of human morality? I believe that this man committed acts of tremendous evil, but that he, at his core, is nothing more than human. Have we learned nothing from the Stanford and Milgram? As flawed in their methodologies as they were, these studies reveal a latent potential for evil in us all.
7
@internetisthenewreligon
Some may find a point of difference between "having the potential " for evil in all of us and the actions of evil in some. Sorry, but it's really not academic to those who were murdered, those who murdered and collaborated. So the answer to your questions is "yes" and if you did not know the answer before you asked it then more's the sorrow and the pity.
6
@internetisthenewreligon
I choose to honor those young Germans and others who were part of the White Rose Society; they knew they were risking death if found; many were found and were beheaded. So, not ALL humans are capable of murder, torture, and other crimes against fellow humans. There were also Dutch people who hid their neighbors, knowing they would be executed if found; the mayor in one small town was hung in the public square. It is too easy to state we are all capable of the worst examples of human behavior; we are not all capable of that.
2
“We accept the moral obligation of Germany, in whose name terrible injustice was committed under the Nazis,” Mr. Maas said.
Something doesn't ring true in this sentence - the use of the passive voice. If anything deserves use of the active, this is it. The people of Germany committed atrocities, and I believe they accept that fact.
6
Some of the people of Germany..
1
@Dorothy In this case, it was a Polish person who was born in modern day Ukraine who is responsible. Not people of Germany. That's what complicated the deportation
2
What this man did was abhorrent, but how is that different from the republican party standing idly by watching the president do so many abhorrent things? People at times become sheep and follow because of fear.
11
Of course he should be prosecuted for his crimes. But, to be cynical, where were the “abolish ICE” protesters and Mayor?
3
Everyone seems to agree that this individual should suffer for the atrocities he was involved with in Germany. Yet the same people that may agree with this, will come up with reasons why confederate monuments should remain in place. Even though those individuals were involved with and wanted to continue the enslavement, and torture of Black people who were already enslaved and tortured for 24 decades. Now that's pathetic.
25
@Irv
Our country is changing. It is a slow process, but the change will come. We need to use our vote to help make the change come sooner.
3
His bad luck not to be a rocket scientist, still he earned what he got.
19
I'm glad they're sending away a Nazi, but I think this is a distraction from the fact that we don't really need ICE. The Nazi's were being deported before ICE was created.
4
The article states that Mr. Palij was "a former volunteer Nazi guard who is believed to have presided over the death camp Trawniki."
So, was he a young volunteer guard at the death camp, or did he actually preside over it (run it)? Did the SS really hand over the operations of a death camp to a 18-20 year-old volunteer?
25
@Van He volunteered for the SS: the most hardcore, dedicated Nazi group ever, per google: Definition of SS. : a unit of Nazis created as bodyguard to Hitler and later expanded to take charge of intelligence, central security, policing action, and the mass extermination of those they considered inferior or undesirable. Even if he wasn't in a supervisory role at the camp, he was certainly involved in the mass murder that took place
7
@Van Exactly right. Without wanting to defend the man, it must be said the article mentions nothing about the proof behind the allegations, something I find very fishy in this report. How could a common soldier now suddenly be the head of a prison camp? It looks like another symbolic gesture to me, made to impress. There are still plenty of ancient Nazis in Germany today who also served and killed plenty of people, fishing and tending their gardens. It is called War, get used to it.
7
@Rushwarp
No, Rushwarp, we don't have to "get used to it"; thousands of us marched and protested our involvement in a civil war in SE Asia; we never supported that war of choice; we were not threatened by a country with no air force or navy; we were not threatened by a country which signed a peace treaty in Paris, and was then invaded and occupied under the direction of a political hack: John Foster Dulles. We do not ever have to "get used to" wars of choice. WWII was justified; Korea? Not so much unless you bought into the Dulles propaganda that China was going to use a small country to cross 3,000 miles to attack San Francisco. Diplomacy might have been the wiser course. Wars of choice are very different from those waged in self-defense. Innocent people, including women, children and old people die in "wars of choice". Our experience with those wars is the reason we are not demanding that the U.S. join with the Saudis and Israelis in a proxy war against their particular enemy, Iran. As I recall from living in CT on 9/11, the attacks on the Towers were led by Saudis who entered the U.S. and hijacked planes to commit two atrocities: more than 2,000 innocent lives were lost. I'm not interested in another dubious "war of choice"; I'm not interested in more money taken from necessary domestic needs in order to fund a "war of choice".
1
Nazi Germany was a hell on earth for Jewish Germans & gentiles. Through years of successful brainwashing, and "rewards" if citizens worked with the SS & German Army, poverty, jobs & hunger could be avoided. This we know was the case. However......murder is not excusable. Murder, torture & humiliation of millions cannot be erased. Yes, the man is 95 but he knew the difference between right & wrong. We "Must" be held responsible for our decisions. To kill innocents is against all of the laws of mankind.
10
Good for Trump - he did something right...
3
@William B. And Bibi is very happy.
1
It's sickening that he lived there in Jackson Heights all those decades. That he lived among Jews, smiled at them, befriended some of them. Sorry to say this but it just goes to show that crime pays.
7
Except those Nazis who, after the war, worked for the US military and served functions in the new west German government, in order to bolster the west against the Soviets. No, those Nazis we don't convict, for whom we see expedient to our interests.
25
There is no statute of limitations for murderers, let alone for participating in the murder of millions. I say good riddance to this Nazi. He can go home to Germany and let them finance his medical care, etc. On a positive note, he'll be home for Octoberfest.
10
@Richard What if home is not Germany, as it is in this case? It's Urkaine/Poland
3
People who are considered “deportable” are now routinely arrested and imprisoned,but this mass murderer wasn’t even subject to house arrest?
Even more sickening:the number of comments attempting to excuse this man’s crimes,many of them by claiming that he was “under pressure” to commit them.They simply ignore what was clearly stated in the article:that he volunteered to join the SS in occupied Poland,where any “pressure”would have been against collaboration.
As for that reliable generator of false equivalence, “history is written by the victor”. True,if the Nazis has been victorious,their murders would now be called heroic,or (possibly) nonexistent.Which do you prefer?
13
Can the Times wake up and remove comments that are obviously bogus? Look at the names. The paper should not be a platform for Nazis and Russians.
10
@Jim
Free Speech is for everyone. It was Nazis and Communists who believed that only they could speak freely.
Lieutenant Calley was released after three and a half years of house arrest.
13
Doesn't Israel want to try him?
5
Until Trump came along it has been hard for Americans to understand how so many Germans could become the Nazis who did all of those terrible things. Or how Hitler took over Germany when less than half of the Germans voted for him.
Maybe now that we have Trump, we can understand the mob mentality a little better. After all, where is our moral outrage at Trump's policy of separating asylum seeking parents from their children. And why aren't we charging any of the people who stolen their children with kidnapping?
99
Oh my, you can’t really believe it was hard for pre-trumpian Americans to understand how educated people could do horrible things. I suggest everyone read “A Little History of the World” by Ernst Gombrich to see how this is in our DNA
@Jack Edwards Ever since Trump came into office we have been cautioned against making comparisons with Nazi Germany and other totalitarian countries around the globe. Is it because the cautious ones don't want to make waves or is it because they think the public is too blind or uncaring to see what is glaringly obvious. Separating children and parents is just the beginning..... Think it can't happen here? Think again.
8
@Jack Edwards I agree with you, Jack -- who knew so many Americans could fall for such an odious and repugnant con man ... However, I think the parent-children separation at the border was one shining instance where a collective moral outrage WAS successful in abruptly ending a despicable policy. Though of course the untold damage it caused whilst in force may take years to repair, if ever.
1
Something pathetic about it when you consider how many thousands of Nazi murderers in far more responsible positions survived the war, totally escaped prosecution and even prospered in the decades that followed.
47
Well Germany just said they will not prosecute him because there are no witnesses and the statute of limitation ran out. Too little to late.
5
@scrumble
Not only prospered, but over a thousand worked for the United States Army as engineers, scientists, and technicians in Operation Paperclip. The reason being of course was to fight the Soviets. Talk about hypocritical.
19
I don't see that there will be much punishment for a 95 yo. He will be better taken care of in his late years in Germany than he would have been in the US.
1
Mr. Palij is a Pole. But Poland would not accept him. Apparently pressure from the U.S. brought about his acceptance by Germany.
5
@Eugene Windchy. Mr. Palij is not an ethnic - he is an ethnic Ukrainian and has documented that in his actions in the US. The Trawniki men were all Ukrainians
3
@Eugene Windchy.
Palij is not a Pole. He is a Ukrainian.
This is a very bad joke. He got a royal tratment for a criminal. First, the US gov failed to prosecute him for genocide. Then Trump ships him to Germany, where he will sit in a tax-payer paid retirement home until and if he is prosecuted. Even when found guilty, he is still coming out in a golden cage: single cell, TV, daily shower, full medical care. This is the worst, most sickening joke of all. He deserve to be in a cell with Charles Manson and the likes, with a shared toilet they have to clean themselves, on mcdonalds $1 burger day and night until death, shower once per month, and ordinary inmate health-uncare to death. There is nothing anyone who has any common sense can be happy about, because this guy was just promoted up the ladder. How blind do you have to be to see that that was not a punishment? And if you don't want to bring him to justice, then why do you punish so many for much minor offences so much more severely?
13
@Lala No. No one deserves that. We are better than that.
1
His house in Rego Park is probably worth over $1 million. Who gets that money? I don't think he should, and neither should his children, if he has any. It should go towards a Holocaust Fund or Jewish charity.
40
The article stated his wife died and they had no children.
1
The Times requests civil comments. How can one be civil when writing about a person who willingly helped murder thousands of people who did nothing wrong?
Frankly, I hope this man suffers during the last years of his life.
26
In the concentration camps of Europe there were Jewish internees who cooperated with their Nazi captors by assisting in the gruesome tasks being committed. These people were known as "capos" or collaborators. Understandably, not much is advertised about them. They cooperated because a gun was put to their heads & they were given an option of serving the captors or being shot. Not unlike the 10 Northern Tribes of Israel who, when made captive by the Assyrians decided to compromise to stay alive & safe. They became the hated "Samaritans" whom the Jews (Elizabethan English short for "Judaeans") despised because they had held fast in Babylonian captivity. (Remember Daniel, Shadrack, Meschak, Abednego?) No one knows how we are going to react when under the gun, although we may soon find out under America's Neo-Fascist movement currently in progress. Many Polish, Ukrainian, & other Eastern Europeans of Slavic origin cooperated with the Nazis because if they did not they would join the folks in the boxcars headed for certain destruction. Yes, dear reader, there were a few million Slavic Gentiles who also were worked to death, gassed & incinerated. To place the burden on someone who chose to live by doing what ordered because of such a threat, must apply also to the "Capos". But I don't recall any of them being deported or prosecuted. If there is evidence of willful desire to participate in genocide then there must be payback. If not-mercy should be granted.
43
@Tony Borrelli: You are ASSUMING that he was forced, because he said that he was, but the article states that records were found showing that he VOLUNTEERED for service with the Nazis! The Capos, who were Jews, were FORCED...They were truly tortured souls, forced to commit atrocities against their own people in return for what they THOUGHT was the continuation of their own lives, but many of them were murdered by the Nazis when they outlived their usefulness...or just for sport. It may be true that some Capos also VOLUNTEERED for the position, thinking it would save them or their families...and I cannot imagine being put into that position...Survival being so paramount to all of us...to continue breathing, seeing, hearing, feeling...Any leftover Capos who did not perish, or were not murdered by the Nazis, would have had to live out the remainder of their lives knowing what they did to their own people (torture, murder) in exchange for their own lives, and/or their families' lives. That may be torture enough...and perhaps even a kind of a living death. While there may have been Capos who were without conscience, I cannot imagine that all of them did what they did without constant psychological suffering. But Mr. Palij was a non-Jew who VOLUNTEERED, and then lied about it so everyone would think that he had no choice.
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This is a disgusting false equivalency...jews were snatched and thrown on trains to the delight if these madmen who JOINED the SS. Jews did not volunteer to go the concentration camps...please stop revealing yourself.
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@Tony Borrelli Capos were placed in concentration camps as prisoners. At liberation, many were beaten or even killed by the prisoners in retaliation. This is an entirely different situation; Palij was in a position of power as a volunteer guard and trained at an SS camp. Of course we don't know his full story, but many guards later said they were forced to do it to escape prosecution.
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How is this justice? I don't understand why everyone is congratulating themselves. It was undoubtedly an incredibly costly affair to get this process rolling, incl. a medical transport. He will never see a day of prison, even if he is convicted. Probably has better care in his few remaining days. Perhaps uprooting an old man is somewhat of a punishment but it's purely symbolic. As a side-note, the SS was an elite group that provided security for the regime and ideology, with hand-picked believers and loyalists. KZ guards were volunteers. It's very unlikely he is innocent.
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@Andreas
It's not "justice". EIchman, kidnapped in a foreign country , rendered to a State that didn't exist at the time of his "crimes" and charged with "crimes" found in no Statute book relevant to the proceedings. This is pure "revenge" motivated, not by those who suffered =-- i've met many survivors,none of whom want to do anything but forget -- but by those seeing political advantage and the opportunity to steal land based on guilt. Time will condemn these hysterical events.
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@David Robinson
Wow. Defending Eichman. Strange times we live in......
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@David Robinson
Oh look here's a novelty- an Eichmann defender.
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Let us never forget the many 20 year old young men and young women, and children who are forever 20 and forever children.
They never had a chance to live to be 95 thanks to among others the "Trawniki Men"!
Dirk
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Look into your hearts. If you had been an ordinary non-Jewish citizen in those times, what would you have done? Would you have objected and watched your loved ones being murdered? You were living in a police state, surrounded by armed guards. I think you probably would have looked away and gone along with it, hoping you and your family would survive.
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@connecticut yankee: The documents were found showing that he VOLUNTEERED; he was not forced, as he stated. And, yes, it is a slippery slope, so to speak. I cannot imagine being put into the position of making such a choice. But to VOLUNTEER????? There were MILLIONS of ordinary non-Jewish citizens at that time who did not participate in these atrocities; they kept quiet, lived their lives, and didn't VOLUNTEER to kill anyone...Additionally, there were many incredibly brave and incredible gentiles, who, rather than commit atrocities against Jews (and others) HID Jews, risking their lives, and their families' lives. There are all sorts of people, right?
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@Elin Minkoff
To refuse Hitler anything is to sign your own death warrant
@connecticut yankee
Rommel never even joined the NAZI party.
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"Justce in the end"...?" It seems to make some people feel better to believe that this criminal has finally faced justice.
There is no justice here. He has been a guest of the United States with all it's privelages and benefits for the past 70+ years. Now he is chauffered by air amulance to Germany where he will no doubt be put in a comfortable dwelling with full medical care.
There is no justice here. Don't pretend there is.
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@Ed Wasil
This is more about "closure" than it is about "justice", in my opinion.
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@Ed Wasil One of the worse things that can happen to an elderly person is a massive disruption of their day-to-day routine. It often brings on a fast, terrifying descent into dementia. While he will not face prison, or even an level of physical discomfort, this is no doubt a frightening experience for him. I'm ok with this.
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Despite the fact that he was 18 at the time, and despite the fact that 18 year old boys back then were like 14 year old boys today, he should be removed from the country and punished.
Now, that said, I wonder why all these people are all men.
We know that women/girls actively participated in perpetrating atrocities in those camps.
We also know that women live longer than men.
Yet we hardly ever hear of cases where the government pursues female perpetrators of atrocities.
Interesting.
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@jy
No, it's not like that at all: 40-years-old men of today are like the 14-year-olds of the WWII era.
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@Otavio Guimaraes Openly sexist comments should not be written.
One question I didn't see answered in this story is whether he is expected to face charges. Or is this simply just moving a 95-year-old man to a retirement home in Germany so we can all feel ... better?
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@Steve R. He will not face charges because Germany believes there is a lack of evidence to prove he was complicit in war crimes. That is why deportation took such a long time.
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“He was not a bad person. He was a good neighbor.” Yes, and Hitler loved children. How we justify accepting the presence of evil among us!
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A prison guard is not a murderer. The murderers are the ones who gave the orders for the deportation of the Jews and who held the power. It is regrettable for him that he took the job as the prison guard and I consider him to be a low level person "following orders" as one might say.
We as a society need to look at the persons who were giving orders and not the pawns doing menial jobs opening and closing doors of a prison. This person did not send a single person to a prison, we must remember that.
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I think if you read about the Holocaust you will understand the depth of culpability of “mere” guards. They weren’t just patrolling a perimeter fence - beatings, random murders and assorted other cruelties occurred on a daily basis, meted out by those guards.
It’s the tip of an iceberg that leads to the “ordinary” soldiers tasked with rounding up and killing tens of thousands in the East, to the “ordinary” civilians who apparently were never aware of these train after train of human cattle, or long processions of starving, weak prisoners being marched to a different camp to keep them away from the Allied armies (though were aware enough to shower them with abuse).
A tip of an iceberg that points a finger squarely at what human beings can do to others if pushed or pulled that way. Yes, punish the leaders - but let’s not forget those who more than took an active part in it.
Read “KL” by Nik Wachsmann.
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Excellent reporting by Sarah Maslin Nir and Ali Winston. Thank you, NYT.
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It doesn't matter how old he is. He needs to admit and pay for his crimes. It certainly didn't matter how old the Jews were when he murdered them. Women, children, men from birth to aged were murdered.
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Just a question, if a 95 years old desserve to be send in jail, what about the owner of Perdu pharma ?
Seriously, what the interest of this mascarde ? The symbol, why not, but we can start by stoping helping Saudi Arabia to kill civil. I can understand the symbol, I even can understand an eye for an eye, but are we sure of the pertinence of all this circus ?
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@pierre As John McEnroe often said, "You can't be serious????"
So much black and white. I hope some day people would realize that we, as human beings, are unfortunately all capable of this kind of violence. It is not unique in the slightest to nazis. That does't make his crimes any less than what they will be found in a court of law to be, but people need to remember that we could all have been him. Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia, Congo, Myanmar, China, Russia, Japan, Cambodia, many other places and yes; Germany, should have shown us that.
Ask that Rabbi, "well what of the Israeli military? Are they not getting away with murder?". Maybe in 75 years, someone will knock down a former Israeli soldier for this same reason, doing that does not solve the fundamental issue, human nature. In order to solve that we need to at the very least accept the human condition for what it is, and the potential that it has. Even if that means awknoledging our own personal potential for evil.
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You talk like this because you dont live in Israel. The palestinians keep stabing innocent people and fireing missiles to cities and the army is trying to prevent it. sometimes you have no choise but to use power to stop somebody harming you. I want to see you saying the same thing if you have to go to the shelter several times a day with a notice of 30 sec...
in the Holocost the Nazies didnt try to defend themself they were attacking innocent people.
or may be you think that the US soldiers who killed the nazies were also evils...
good is good and bad is bad. no reson to mix it!
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@Jonathan Bormann your post is a sage one. If this realization of human nature were more wide-spread, many would have much more compassion for others. Something we so desperately need in our world right now.
thank you for posting.
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@Jonathan Bormann Potential and Action are two different things. No one could truthfully say they never had a violent thought or desire, but if you act on it, I would not bet on anyone objecting to you being punished. If 'human nature' was an adequate defense, there would be no need to punishments or reparations.
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The German government has already stated that while it will take Mr. SS back, it does not believe sufficient evidence remains to put him on trial. Most eye-witnesses have long since died of old age in the 73 years since Mr. SS last wore his death's head uniform cap with pride, while harming no one, ever.
So the comments should be interesting. Like the soot-blackened painting on the wall in the Spouter-Inn of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, most people will see what they want to see.
Remove guilt by association, and the article does not report a single fact linking Mr. SS to a single crime. Perhaps there is more, simply not reported here. If so, it merely proves the point: justice delayed is justice denied.
Maybe the article should cross-reference the strange case of Dr. Wernher von Braun, a Nazi scientist who created the V-1 and V-2 rockets which rained indiscriminate death upon English citizens for several years. He was never charged with war crimes. Instead, he was brought to the US as a celebrity; housed, clothed, fed and feted, so he could build bigger and better rockets for us to bash the Russians with. Such a good man.
One suspects there is a larger story here, of US policy in the 1940's, which looked past tall tales on immigration papers so long as the applicant was not Jewish. Irony is not the word I'm looking for here.
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@alexander hamilton
Or, as Tom Lehrer put it:
"'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun."
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@mancuroc
Exactly!
@alexander hamilton
A very demonstrable crime is that he lied on his immigration application. Had he been truthful, he would not have been given the opportunity to enjoy life and prosper in America.
A take-away lesson here is that it is a privilege to be permitted to settle in the US, and to be awarded with citizenship. It is within the rights of the US to decide who will be given that privilege, and persons who attempt to defraud the system may be stripped of that privilege.
The parallels to Werner Von Braun are not legitimate. Operation Paperclip did not ignore the fact that scientists like Von Braun were Nazis. Unfortunately, Paperclip was a realpolitik strategy intended not only to benefit US national security by putting these scientists to work for us, but also to prevent the Soviet Union from putting these scientists to work for them. You are kidding yourself, however, if you think that any of these scientists ever lost the taint of their WWII allegiances in the eyes of most Americans.
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Justice prevails in the end.
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@Jacquie: One would LIKE to hope so. You cannot garner justice for such grand scale atrocities. But every little bit of "evening up" helps.
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I'm certainly glad this man is going to face justice even as a 95 year old man.
But I'm curious about the Trump administration's boasting that they were finally the ones to "get this done" by pressuring the Germans. When I first heard the story, including the fact that he was "stuck" here for 14 years as no country would take him, I wondered how that was possible. Now I see a picture of his cute house in Jackson Heights...where presumably he spent those 14 years waiting for Trump to kick him out...
I wondered: how many folks who are not 95, or European, or educated, how many of them would have been allowed to simply hang out at home until they were sent back home for mass murder? For instance, how many of our fellow humans from south of the border would be allowed to simply go home to their nice brick home to await the possibility that the government would kick them out? Right...not too many.
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@Willie734 Good point Willie, what loophole in the international justice system could preclude this guy from being locked here for Crimes Against Humanity under our federal system.
So between the ages of 20-22 this simple Polish peasant served as a Nazi concentration camp guard. He says he did it to protect his family. Well, the Nazis murdered 6000 Jews with machine guns on a single day. Should we think that this very young man had a credible fear of what the Nazis might do to his family if he refused them? Frankly, I don't understand why he had to be deported. It was a political statement, but sending a 95 year old man to Germany for his role as a very low level concentration camp guard when he was in late adolescence strikes me as absurd and a little mean. We didn't deport Heinrich Himmler.
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@Yankelnevich
The article says he volunteered for the SS. He could have served the Wehrmacht (the regular army) in some civil capacity to save his family if that was his real concern.
Only true believers joined the Waffen SS - the ISIS of their time.
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Himmler could not be deported from the USA because he never resided here. He killed himself with cyanide in Germany in 1945.
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@Yankelnevich
Himmler committed suicide while in British Custody after being caught during an escape attempt.
5
Cogent, but it ignores the tremendous social pressure that he was under to conform to expectations of evil in Nazi Germany. God help us all to have been able to resist if in the same high pressure context.
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@Charles Bensonhaver, MD
That would only be true if he was forced to serve at the camp under threats of death. Volunteering to do so and participating in its atrocities means he is a war criminal deserving punishment.
What value is there in making excuses for those too weak to resist attrocities?
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@Charles Bensonhaver, MD
That is in the current parlance "hogwash".
Trawniki men (Trawnikimänner) or HiWi (Hilfswilliger = those willing to help) were volunteers for what ever reason (Locals, POWs, others) and screened for anti-communist sentiments which then was equivalent to anti-Semitic beliefs.
Some Locals did resist actively or passively, fewer hid or abetted Jews at great risk.
I am indifferent to his fate. My pity is reserved for 90 year olds, often holding grandchildren or great grandchildren, these Trawniki men pushed into gas chambers or shooting pits .
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@Charles Bensonhaver, MD
In the camps, guards had the option to leave for a combat units. There is no record of any German soldiers refusing to commit war crimes being court-martialed.
Although a few German soldiers committed suicide after a mass murder.
I don't think anybody forced Palij to be a murderer. Palij may have actually liked what he was doing.
8
History is written by the victors.
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@C. Are you suggesting there is a defensible argument to the intentional planning and killing millions of innocent people?
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@C. What exactly is the point? That's there an alternative truth? We've heard that strange song before.
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@C.
That may be true but it’s not very salient.
This man has never stood trial for his actions so the story and truth of his participation at Trawdiki is unknown.
He should be tried and if convicted face harsh punishment.
4
All of the Holocaust survivors I knew are gone. Their lives were poisoned by what they survived. Decades after they would bring up in conversation the camps.
I am exceptionally unemotional, but this is the only subject that makes me fell like crying.
If there is an afterlife with fire and brimstone, I hope there is a special place for Nazis.
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@mrmeat I've always hoped that if there's an afterlife, all of the evil and pain in people is burned away, and we become children in the garden of eden again.
1
14 years waiting for a country to accept him? Ludicrous- put the man on a plane, land in Ukraine and boot him out. And in all those years, did anyone ask Israel if they wanted him...for trial?
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US Ambassador Grenell is on the record as wanting to empower right-wing extremists in Europe, maybe he’s simply importing his own private hero back to the old country.
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Unfortunately if he really was a Nazi prison guard he has not gotten what he deserved. He lived to 95. How many Nazi victims have lived that long? Justice delayed is no justice at all.
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The man knew he was guilty, otherwise why emigrate to the United States in 1949? Whether he ever had remorse is something else again. But, my guess is that he had none, since he lied to his neighbors about his role in the Holocaust. Justice, while late, is an old decrepit frightened lonely man facing a bit of the kind of fear he instilled in innocents many years ago. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
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@EMiller Most of them are gone now but there have been several former Nazis who used their remaining years to talk to people and students about their involvement in the Holocaust and the horror associated with it. Not an easy thing to do but at least they were honest and tried to educate people about what happened.
1
He should have been shipped back to Germany in the airplane version of a cattle car. As he did to many others, he should not be treated as a human.
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Would like to get an estimate of the cost of an air ambulance from NYC to Dusseldorf.
Too little too late.
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@Martin smith
Undoubtedly enormous ( the cost of an air-ambulance), but probably not even close to the cost of endless appeals and incarceration of those sentenced to death in the USA).
Justice has a cost, no doubt, but she (he) has to be served...
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@Martin smith:
Much more than the cost of a bullet, for which the SS would send a bill to the murdered victim's family.
13