Justice delayed is . . . justice delayed. Not justice denied, because if justice means anything—if America’s criminal justice system is to retain a scintilla of strength from moral rot within and martial enemies from without—if there is a constant to this White House, it is opposition not only to illegal immigration but to immigration by the world’s worst criminals. To see justice done, then, is to know that neither the passage of time nor the passing of the victims of the worst crime to have befallen any people can stop us from seeking justice for the Jewish people. The last Nazi living in America is now another dead Nazi, who was deported by America to Germany last year.
Jakiw Palij, a former guard at a forced-labor camp for Jews, died last Wednesday. He was 95.
That he died a free man is an injustice. That he died without the rights and liberties of an American citizen, that he was deported by a president of German (and Scottish) descent, that our president has a Jewish daughter and a Jewish son-in-law—that they have three Jewish children of their own—is altogether just.
Our country did what the fatherland had refused to do: to render justice not unto the sons of evildoers but against their fathers; the guards, the commanders, and the administrators of industrialized murder.
Our country did what all Germany’s attempts at expiation will never do. We expelled a member of the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history.
We deported a Nazi.