We typically reserve death mentions in this column for people we admire or of great historical significance.

Here we note the demise of a man who fits neither bill: Jakiw Palij, the Nazi death camp guard who for decades lived quietly in Queens, evading accounting for his crimes against humanity.

This 1942 photo provided by the the public prosecutor's office in Hamburg via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, shows Heinrich Himmler, center left, shaking hands with new guard recruits at the Trawniki concentration camp in Nazi occupied Poland. Trawniki is the same camp, where some time after this photo was made, Jakiw Palij trained and served as a guard. Public prosecutor's office in Hamburg via the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum via AP

For years, the Daily News pounded the table to get him sent back to Germany. In August, President Donald Trump and his ambassador to Germany, Ric Grenell, finally got it done. Deutschland is where Palij died.

Credit also goes to the high school boys of the Rambam Mesivta yeshiva on Long Island, who for more than 20 years have kept up the pressure. And to Department of Justice prosecutors, led by Eli Rosenbaum, who did the legal work.

Now, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel should hold hearings probing the State Department’s habit of thwarting DOJ efforts to remove Nazi murderers. The grim reaper shouldn’t administer justice; that’s America’s job.

Editorial by the New York Daily News

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