Jakiw Palij
At least 10 suspected Nazi war criminals whose deportations
were ordered by the United States never actually left the country, according to
an Associated Press review of Justice Department data — and four are living in
the U.S. today. All remained eligible for public benefits such as Social
Security until they exhausted appeals, and in one case even beyond.
Quiet American legal limbo was the fate of all 10 men
uncovered in the AP review. The reason: While the U.S. wanted them out, no
other country was willing to take them in.
That's currently the case of Vladas Zajanckauskas in Sutton,
Massachusetts. It's the case of Theodor Szehinskyj in West Chester,
Pennsylvania. Of Jakiw Palij in New York City. And of John Kalymon in Troy,
Michigan.
All have been in the same areas for years, stripped of
citizenship and ordered deported, yet able to carry out their lives in familiar
surroundings. Dozens of other Nazi war crimes suspects in the U.S. were also
entitled to Social Security and other public benefits for years as they fought
deportation.
The United States can deport people over evidence of
involvement in Nazi war crimes, but cannot put such people on trial because the
alleged crimes did not take place on American soil. The responsibility to
prosecute would lie with the countries where the crimes were committed or
ordered — if the suspects ever end up there.
In the 34 years since the Justice Department created an
office to find and deport Nazi suspects, the agency has initiated legal
proceedings against 137 people. Less than half — at least 66 — have been
removed by deportation, extradition or voluntary departure.
At least 20 died while their cases were pending. In at least
20 other cases, U.S. officials agreed not to pursue or enforce deportation
orders, often because of poor health, according to a 2008 report by the Justice
Department. In some cases, the U.S. government agreed not to file deportation
proceedings in exchange for cooperation in other investigations, the report
said.
But the key stumbling block has been the lack of political
will by countries in Europe to accept those ordered to leave.
"Without any doubt, the greatest single frustration has
been our inability, in quite a number of cases now, to carry out the
deportation orders that we've won in federal courts. We can't carry them out
because governments of Europe refuse to take these people back," Eli
Rosenbaum, the longtime head of the Justice Department agency charged with
investigating accused Nazi war criminals, said in the 2011 documentary
"Elusive Justice: The Search for Nazi War Criminals."
Justice officials declined to make Rosenbaum available for
an interview.
The four men still living in the U.S despite deportation
orders have all exhausted appeals:
—Zajanckauskas, 97, remains in Massachusetts 11 years after
authorities first began the denaturalization process. He was ordered deported
to his native Lithuania in 2007, and ran out of appeals in 2010 but remains in
the U.S. because other countries, including Lithuania, won't accept him,
Rosenbaum has said. Zajanckauskas took part in the "brutal liquidation"
of the Warsaw Ghetto, according to Rosenbaum. Zajanckauskas, who didn't return
a message from the AP, has denied being in Warsaw at the time.
—Szehinskyj, 89, remains in Pennsylvania nearly 14 years
after DOJ began a case against him. He was denaturalized and ordered deported
to his native Ukraine, Poland or Germany, and exhausted all appeals in 2006.
The Department of Justice has said no country has been willing to accept him.
Authorities say Szehinskyj was an armed guard at Nazi concentration camps in Germany
and Poland, a claim he has denied. Szehinskyj's attorney didn't return messages
from the AP.
—Palij, 89, remains in New York 11 years after the DOJ
initiated a case against him and seven years after he exhausted appeals. Court
records say Palij — born in a part of Poland that is now part of Ukraine— was
an armed guard at an SS slave labor camp for Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland until
at least the spring of 1943, and helped to keep prisoners from escaping. Palij
has denied the accusations. The original order deporting Palij to Ukraine has
been amended to allow deportation to Germany, Poland or any other country
willing to accept him. Justice officials say none has been willing. A man who
answered the phone at Palij's number had trouble hearing and could not carry
out a phone conversation. A woman who answered the phone at the office of
Palij's attorney said he does not speak to reporters.
—Kalymon, 92, is still in Michigan despite exhausting
appeals earlier this year in a process that took nine years. Prosecutors said
Kalymon, who was born in Poland, was a member of the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian
Auxiliary Police in Lviv, which rounded up Jews and imprisoned them.
Prosecutors said Kalymon also shot Jews. He was ordered deported to Ukraine,
Poland, Germany or any other country that would take him. His attorney, Elias
Xenos, said his client was a teenage boy who was essentially guarding a sack of
coal.
"That's not the government's position, of course. But
they've run out of true persecutors, and they are trying to now prosecute
people on the fringes," Xenos said.
He said he is not aware of any country that has agreed to
take Kalymon, who he said has Alzheimer's disease and cancer.
In Poland, prosecutor Grzegorz Malisiewicz said an
investigation of Kalymon was closed in January because authorities couldn't
definitively tie him to crimes committed in 1942. In Germany, Munich
prosecutors have been investigating Kalymon on suspicion of murder since 2010.
Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, said many countries lack the political will to accept suspected Nazi
criminals who have been ordered deported: "I don't think it's any lack of
effort by the American government."
Germany has taken the position that people involved in Nazi
crimes must be prosecuted, no matter how old or infirm, as it did in the case
of retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk. He died last year at age 91 while
appealing his conviction of being an accessory to 28,060 murders while a guard
at the Sobibor death camp.
Before that case, Germany had been reluctant to prosecute
Nazi war crimes suspects who weren't German citizens, said Stephen Paskey, a
former Justice Department attorney who worked on the Demjanjuk and
Zajanckauskas cases. Germany has also resisted accepting those who are ordered
deported because, like other countries, it doesn't want to be seen as a refuge
for those with Nazi pasts, the DOJ said.
The case of Johann Leprich fell into that category.
Authorities said Leprich, of Clinton Township, Michigan, served as an armed
guard at a Nazi camp in Austria during World War II. He was 78 when he was
ordered deported in 2003. Germany, Hungary and Leprich's native Romania — which
passed a law in 2002 barring the entry of war crimes suspects — all refused to
accept him. A technical issue related to Leprich's deportation order allowed
him to remain eligible for public benefits until he died in 2013, although for
unclear reasons he stopped receiving them long before that.
According to AP's analysis of DOJ records, five other Nazi
suspects were ordered deported but remained in the U.S. until they died because
no country was willing to take them:
—Osyp Firishchak, 93, of Chicago, died last November, nine
months after exhausting appeals. A U.S. judge concluded that Firishchak had
lied when he said he was not a member of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, which
helped Nazis arrest Jews in large numbers and sent them to labor and death
camps. He was born in territory that was then Czechoslovakia and is now part of
the Ukraine. He was ordered deported to Ukraine in 2007.
—Anton Tittjung, of Wisconsin, died last year at age 87.
Born in a part of the former Yugoslavia that is now Croatia, he was accused of
being an armed guard at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria and was
ordered deported to Croatia in 1994. He said he was not a Nazi. He exhausted
his appeals in 2001 but remained in the U.S. because Croatia would not accept
him, saying he was neither born there nor a citizen of Croatia, according to a
DOJ report. The U.S. also asked Austria and Germany to accept him; both
refused.
—Mykola Wasylyk spent most of his American years in the
Catskills region, 90 miles north of New York City, and died in North Port,
Florida, in 2010 at age 86. He exhausted his appeals in 2004. He was born in
former Polish territory that is now part of Ukraine. Prosecutors say he was an
armed guard at two forced labor camps in Nazi-occupied Poland, but he claimed
he was unaware that prisoners there were persecuted. The United States ordered
him deported to Ukraine. At Wasylyk's request, the DOJ amended the order to
seek to deport him first to Switzerland. Neither country took him in.
—Michael Negele, died in St. Peters, Missouri, in 2008 at
age 87. He was ordered deported to his native Romania or to Germany in 2003,
and he exhausted appeals in June 2004. Neither country was willing to take him,
the DOJ said. Negele was accused of being an armed guard and dog handler at the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, and later at the Theresienstadt
Jewish ghetto in what is now the Czech Republic. Negele had argued he was not
involved in any wartime atrocities.
—Bronislaw Hajda, died in Schiller Park, Illinois, in 2005
at age 80. He was ordered deported to his native Poland or Germany in 1998, and
his appeals process ended in 2001. But both countries repeatedly refused to
accept him, authorities said. He was accused of participating in a massacre of
Jews at a Nazi slave labor camp. Hajda had denied the allegations and said he
never killed anyone.
Leading Holocaust experts express frustration at the failure
to remove such men from the United States.
"That they have been able to live out their lives
enjoying the freedoms of this country, after depriving others of freedom and
life itself, is an affront to the memory of those who perished," said Paul
Shapiro, director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
The reluctance of countries to accept suspected Nazi
collaborators could become a factor in the case of Michael Karkoc, a Minnesota
man identified in an AP investigation last month as a commander in a Nazi SS-led
unit accused of massacres.
Both German and Polish prosecutors are investigating whether
there is enough evidence to bring charges against Karkoc, 94, and seek
extradition. If neither country decides to charge Karkoc, U.S. officials may
try to hold him accountable through separate civil proceedings that would strip
him of his citizenship and seek to have him deported. In that event, the U.S.
would need to find a country that would take him in — and the earlier cases
suggest that may prove difficult.
"No one is obligated to take him unless he is
charged," Paskey said. "Ukraine wouldn't have to take him. No one
else would want him."
The AP investigation revealed that Karkoc lied to American
immigration officials to enter the United States after the war, saying he had
no military experience and concealing his work as an officer and founding
member of the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion. Records don't show Karkoc
had a direct hand in wartime atrocities, but the evidence shows that he had
command responsibility over a unit that massacred Polish civilians. Karkoc's
family claims he was never involved in Nazi war crimes. Justice officials would
not confirm whether the U.S. is investigating Karkoc.
Paskey said the U.S. could have a good denaturalization case
against Karkoc, because prosecutors wouldn't have to prove he had a direct hand
in war crimes. But the quickest — and perhaps only — way to remove him from the
U.S. would be if he is charged criminally.
"Unless Poland or Germany decides to prosecute
him," Paskey said, "he is likely to die in the United States."
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