Scores of students protested on 89th Street near Northern Boulevard in Jackson Heights, Queens this afternoon, demanding that a former guard at a Nazi forced labor camp be deported.
The protest, staged on the 67th anniversary of Kristalnacht, was in front of the home of Jayiw Palij, 81, who during World War II was a guard at the Trawniki forced labor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
On November 3, 1943, more than 6,000 men, women and children at Trawniki were shot to death. Federal officials did not accuse Palij of taking part in the atrocities, but claimed that as a guard, he contributed to the slaughter.
Palij entered the U.S. in 1949, falsely claiming he had worked on a Polish farm and in a German factory during the war. An immigration judge ordered him deported to the Ukraine in 2002. He is appealing the decision.
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After protesting at Palij’s home, the students, who arrived in two yellow buses, were driven to home another man, Jaroslaw Bilaniuk, now 82, who lives in Douglaston. The justice department filed a complaint against him December 26, 2002, alleging that he too trained for service at the Trawniki Training Camp. The government is seeking a judgment revoking his U.S. citizenship.