3 minutes agoAfter a long battle, the Nazi guard is deported from US to Germany
Periskopi(8 years ago)
(8 years ago)A former Nazi collaborator who served in the SS as a guard caught during World War II has been deported from the US to Germany after a long battle. 95-year-old Jakiw Paulj has been without citizenship, as a federal judge revoted his American citizenship in 2003. For years Germany refused [...]
95-year-old Jakiw Paulj has been without citizenship, as a federal judge revoted his American citizenship in 2003.
For years Germany rejected him because Paul had never had a German nationality.
After arriving at Dusseldorf, he was taken to a nursing home for the elderly.
US Ambassador to Berlin Richard Green praised Germany's new government for resolving the issue.
Who's Jaiw? Paul?
Authorities believed he was the last Nazi associate still living in the United States, and his residence in the Queens area of New York City sparked protests by residents.
Paul is reportedly born in an area of Poland now in Ukraine.
In 1943 he went to the SS Travnik training camp in Nazi - occupied Poland.
Travnik was known because thousands of civilians were trained there as death guards in Sobibor, Treblinka and Belzec.
The most famous guard in the camp was John Demynjuk, who was sentenced by a German court as accomplice for 28,000 murders in Sobibor. It was also deported by the US in 2009.
The Jews were sent to the camps as part of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to kill more than two million Jews in occupied Poland.
Travnik also established a forced labor camp where more than 6,000 Jews were killed on a single day on November 3, 1943.
A White House statement said Pauly served as an armed guard and had played a necessary “ ” in securing the Jews ' murder.
He arrived in the United States in 1949 and was granted citizenship in 1957.
Although an American court ruled that he had helped persecute prisoners, he was personally held responsible for the deaths.
His deportation was ordered in 2004 after a judge said he had forged his application for immigration.
Paul himself has denied co-operation with the Nazis.
He said in the New York Times in 2003 that he had never set foot in a camp and agreed to work only as a guard because the Nazis would kill his family if he refused.
Why did the deportation last so long?
American authorities were unable to convince Germany, Ukraine, or Poland to take it. He has never had German citizenship and originated in an area of Poland that is now part of Ukraine.
US Ambassador said his deportation to Germany was taken after the arrival of Chancellor Angela Merkel's new cabinet earlier this year.
Central Left Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that Germany had moral duty to deal with the crimes of the Nazi terror regime.
