Jakiw Palij has been hiding away for years in Queens, New York, but the pensioner was tracked down and accused of working at two notorious camps in Poland during World War Two
THE last known Nazi collaborator living in the US was today deported to Germany where he could face justice at last.
On the order of Donald Trump, immigration agents removed 95-year-old Jakiw Palij from his home in Queens, New York, in a dawn raid this morning.
His dramatic deportation, which saw him strapped to a stretcher as he was removed from his home, came 25 years after investigators first confronted him about his past.
At that time he confessed to lying to get into the US, claiming he spent the war as a farmer and factory worker.
But authorities have since been unable to deport him.
Polish-born Palij was tracked down after his name was spotted by chance on an old Nazi roster.
A fellow former guard then spilled the secret that he was "living somewhere in America".
Investigators working on this tip eventually found he had made his home in New York and had worked drafting legal documents before he retired.
When Justice Department investigators showed up at his door, Palij said: "I would never have received my visa if I told the truth.
"Everyone lied."
His US citizenship was revoked shortly after in 2003 and he was ordered to be deported in 2004.
But no European country would accept him, according to reports, and he has been living in limbo until Germany recently agreed to take him.
His continued presence at a two-story, red brick home he shared with his wife, Maria, now 86, outraged the neighbouring Jewish community.
They have staged frequent protests over the years - featuring such chants as "your neighbour is a Nazi!"
According to the Justice Department, Palij served at Trawniki training and labour in 1943, the same year 6,000 prisoners were murdered and buried in pits.
Palij has admitted serving here but denied any involvement in war crimes.
It is also alleged he served as an SS armed guard at the Treblinka Extermination Camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, which he denied.
It is considered one of the deadliest Nazi death camps in occupied Poland during World War Two.
Here at least 900,000 Jews and Roma gypsies perished in gas chambers or by brutal treatment at the hands of sadistic guards.
After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Palij allegedly collaborated with the occupying forces and worked in concentration camps.
With the Soviet Army pushing back the Nazi occupiers, Palij fled and went underground to escape detection from allied investigators who were hot on the tale of SS guards straight after the war.
But in 1949 Palij emigrated to the United States and pretended to the immigration authorities that he did not take part in the war and worked on his father’s farm.
The Nazis operated multiple gas chambers at Treblinka, considered the deadliest Nazi camp after Auschwitz.
Located in a remote area of occupied Poland, the facility opened in 1942 and was the part of genocidal plans by Adolf Hitler and his devoted henchmen to slaughter the Jewish people of Europe under the cover of war.
The covert mass murder was called Operation Reinhard, which was the Nazi's codename for the Final Solution.
Shootings were soon deemed inefficient and were replaced by six large gas chambers which were disguised as shower rooms.
Bodies of men, women and children were cremated to cover up the mass killings.
Most of the 900,000 Jews and more than 1,000 gypsies who were executed were rounded up in Poland, packed into walled areas in cities called ghettos, before being sent to the camps.
Earlier this month Israeli Ambassador Anna Azari joined Polish officials and the relatives of former inmates in a ceremony marking 75 years since the revolt of prisoners.
Ada Krystyna Willenberg, the widow of one revolt fighter Samuel Willenberg, appealed last week for a proper museum to be built at the site of the former camp.
The current memorial consists of boulders bearing the names of locations that the inmates came from.
Only 300 inmates managed to escape during the August 2, 1943, revolt.
Just a few dozen of them avoided being caught and survived.
A statement released today by the Office of the Press Secretary said: “The United States government has prioritised the identification, prosecution and deportation of Nazi war criminals since the 1970s.
“President Trump commends his administration's comprehensive actions, especially the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in removing this war criminal from US soil."
Palij strongly denies the claims and insists he did not take part in any atrocities.
In the past 40 years, the US government has initiated legal proceedings to expel just 137 of the estimated 10,000 suspected Nazi war criminals who immigrated to American after World War 2.
At least 67 have been deported, extradited or left voluntarily.
Some 28 died while their cases were pending.
As reported earlier this year, softly spoken Stanislaw Chrzanowski became the first person in the UK to be investigated for Nazi war crimes.
Neighbours spoke of a “gentle” figure who never spoke about the war and was regularly spotted on his mobility scooter around the streets of Telford, Shrops.
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