Nazi In Queens Should Be Deported To Germany: Sen. Gillibrand

JACKSON HEIGHTS, QUEENS -- A former Nazi guard has lived in Queens for years, but he shouldn't get to die there.

That's the message New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand hoped to send in a letter penned to the German ambassador on Wednesday urging the country to take back Jakiw Palij.

The 94-year-old former Nazi guard, once stationed at a brutal concentration camp in Poland, has been living peacefully in his Jackson Heights home for years, the Washington Post first reported. Lawmakers and Jewish groups want Palij out, and a federal judge ordered he be deported, but every country asked to take him - including Germany - has refused.

Gillibrand hoped to sway the decision with a letter to German Ambassador Peter Wittig, urging him to work with U.S. diplomats to "accept this proven Nazi collaborator."

"My constituents have made it clear that Mr. Palij is not welcome in our state," Gillibrand wrote. "They agreed he lost his right to remain here when the brutal past he tried so hard to hide was revealed in an American courtroom."

Palij hid his service as a Nazi guard when he arrived to the United States in 1949, instead claiming he worked on his father's farm in Poland and at a factory in Germany during the war, the New York Post reported. A federal court in New York revoked his citizenship 14 years ago after his past came to light. A year later, an immigration judge ordered he be sent to Germany, Poland or the Ukraine.

None of the countries would take him.

Since then, politicians and Jewish groups alike have put the pressure on Trump's administration to deport Palij. In September, the entire New York congressional delegation signed a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, demanding he step in before the former Nazi dies on American soil, the Washington Post reported. In November, around 200 Jewish high school students protested outside Palij's home, chanting "His hands are drenched in blood," according to the New York Post.

Gillibrand said her latest letter came after learning German diplomats had yet again refused to accept Palij during a recent meeting with their U.S. counterparts in Berlin. She urged the country to reconsider, and "show the world that Mr. Palij's crimes have not been forgotten."

"We can show that we have learned from the past and stand together today against anti-Semitism, bigotry, and hatred in all forms," she wrote.

Lead photo via Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press.