Jaroslaw Bilaniuk

Jaroslaw Bilaniuk (October 15, 1923 - April 5, 2007) was a long-term naturalized United States citizen who was the subject of an intensive effort by the United States government for denaturalization and removal from the United States.
This was based on the grounds that he< and another guard at the Trawniki concentration camp, Jakiw Palij, both residents of Queens, New York, had "failed to disclose their wartime service." Bilaniuk came to the United States in July 1949 and received U.S. citizenship in May 1957. Both men were the subjects of denaturalization proceedings in 2002. Palij was stripped of his " citizenship in 2003, but has not been booted because no country will take him."
Born in the village of Piadyki, in the in what was then part of Poland (now Pyadyky, in the Kolomyia of Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) Bilaniuk started out at the Trawniki training camp in 1943, according to a complaint filed against him in federal court on December 26, 2002. The complaint went on to state: "At the camp, Nazi guards were trained for a program code-named 'Operation Reinhard', in which about 1.7 million Jews were murdered."
Death
Jaroslaw Bilaniuk died on April 5, 2007, aged 83, in Queens, New York from undisclosed causes and was buried at a Ukrainian Catholic cemetery. It is not clear if he still held United States citizenship at the time of his death.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu