Ukranian SS Leader Accused of War Crimes found living in Minnesota - Polidicks

[QUOTE] BERLIN – A top commander of a Nazi SS-led unit accused of burning villages filled with women and children lied to American immigration officials to get into the United States and has been living in Minnesota since shortly after World War II, according to evidence uncovered by The Associated Press. Michael Karkoc, 94, told American authorities in 1949 that he had performed no military service during World War II, concealing his work as an officer and founding member of the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion and later as an officer in the SS Galician Division, according to records obtained by the AP through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Galician Division and a Ukrainian nationalist organization he served in were both on a secret American government blacklist of organizations whose members were forbidden from entering the United States at the time. Though records do not show that Karkoc had a direct hand in war crimes, statements from men in his unit and other documentation confirm the Ukrainian company he commanded massacred civilians, and suggest that Karkoc was at the scene of these atrocities as the company leader. Nazi SS files say he and his unit were also involved in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which the Nazis brutally suppressed a Polish rebellion against German occupation. Polish prosecutors announced Friday after the release of the AP investigation that they will investigate Karkoc and provide "every possible assistance" to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has used lies in immigration papers to deport dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals. The AP evidence of Karkoc's wartime activities has also prompted German authorities to express interest in exploring whether there is enough to prosecute. In Germany, Nazis with "command responsibility" can be charged with war crimes even if their direct involvement in atrocities cannot be proven. Karkoc refused to discuss his wartime past at his home in Minneapolis, and repeated efforts to set up an interview, using his son as an intermediary, were unsuccessful. Efraim Zuroff, the lead Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said that based on his decades of experience pursuing Nazi war criminals, he expects that the evidence showing Karkoc lied to American officials and that his unit carried out atrocities is strong enough for deportation and war-crimes prosecution in Germany or Poland. "In America this is a relatively easy case: If he was the commander of a unit that carried out atrocities, that's a no brainer," Zuroff said. "Even in Germany ... if the guy was the commander of the unit, then even if they can't show he personally pulled the trigger, he bears responsibility." Former German army officer Josef Scheungraber -- a lieutenant like Karkoc -- was convicted in Germany in 2009 on charges of murder based on circumstantial evidence that put him on the scene of a Nazi wartime massacre in Italy as the ranking officer. German prosecutors are obligated to open an investigation if there is enough "initial suspicion" of possible involvement in war crimes, said Thomas Walther, a former prosecutor with the special German office that investigates Nazi war crimes. The current deputy head of that office, Thomas Will, said there is no indication that Karkoc had ever been investigated by Germany. Based on the AP's evidence, he said he is now interested in gathering information that could possibly result in prosecution. Prosecution in Poland may also be a possibility because most of the unit's alleged crimes were against Poles on Polish territory. But Karkoc would be unlikely to be tried in his native Ukraine, where such men are today largely seen as national heroes who fought for the country against the Soviet Union. Karkoc now lives in a modest house in northeast Minneapolis in an area with a significant Ukrainian population. Even at his advanced age, he came to the door without help of a cane or a walker. He would not comment on his wartime service for Nazi Germany. "I don't think I can explain," he said. Members of his unit and other witnesses have told stories of brutal attacks on civilians. One of Karkoc's men, Vasyl Malazhenski, told Soviet investigators that in 1944 the unit was directed to "liquidate all the residents" of the village of Chlaniow in a reprisal attack for the killing of a German SS officer, though he did not say who gave the order. "It was all like a trance: setting the fires, the shooting, the destroying," Malazhenski recalled, according to the 1967 statement found by the AP in the archives of Warsaw's state-run Institute of National Remembrance, which investigates and prosecutes German and Soviet crimes on Poles during and after World War II. "Later, when we were passing in file through the destroyed village," Malazhenski said, "I could see the dead bodies of the killed residents: men, women, children." In a background check by U.S. officials on April 14, 1949, Karkoc said he had never performed any military service, telling investigators that he "worked for father until 1944. Worked in labor camp from 1944 until 1945." However, in a Ukrainian-language memoir published in 1995, Karkoc states that he helped found the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion in 1943 in collaboration with the Nazis' feared SS intelligence agency, the SD, to fight on the side of Germany -- and served as a company commander in the unit, which received orders directly from the SS, through the end of the war. It was not clear why Karkoc felt safe publishing his memoir, which is available at the U.S. Library of Congress and the British Library and which the AP located online in an electronic Ukrainian library. Karkoc's name surfaced when a retired clinical pharmacologist who took up Nazi war crimes research in his free time came across it while looking into members of the SS Galician Division who emigrated to Britain. He tipped off AP when an Internet search showed an address for Karkoc in Minnesota. "Here was a chance to publicly confront a man who commanded a company alleged to be involved in the cruel murder of innocent people," said Stephen Ankier, who is based in London. The AP located Karkoc's U.S. Army intelligence file, and got it declassified by the National Archives in Maryland through a FOIA request. The Army was responsible for processing visa applications after the war under the Displaced Persons Act. The intelligence file said standard background checks with seven different agencies found no red flags that would disqualify him from entering the United States. But it also noted that it lacked key information from the Soviet side: "Verification of identity and complete establishment of applicant's reliability is not possible due to the inaccessibility of records and geographic area of applicant's former residence." Wartime documents located by the AP also confirm Karkoc's membership in the Self Defense Legion. They include a Nazi payroll sheet found in Polish archives, signed by an SS officer on Jan. 8, 1945 -- only four months before the war's end -- confirming that Karkoc was present in Krakow, Poland, to collect his salary as a member of the Self Defense Legion. Karkoc signed the document using Cyrillic letters. Karkoc, an ethnic Ukrainian, was born in the city of Lutsk in 1919, according to details he provided American officials. At the time, the area was being fought over by Ukraine, Poland and others; it ended up part of Poland until World War II. Several wartime Nazi documents note the same birth date, but say he was born in Horodok, a town in the same region. He joined the regular German army after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and fought on the Eastern Front in Ukraine and Russia, according to his memoirs, which say he was awarded an Iron Cross for bravery. He was also a member of the Ukrainian nationalist organization OUN; in 1943, he helped negotiate with the Nazis to have men drawn from its membership form the Self Defense Legion, according to his account. Initially small, it eventually numbered some 600 soldiers. The legion was dissolved and folded into the SS Galician Division in 1945; Karkoc wrote that he remained with it until the end of the war. Read more: [url]http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/14/nazi-commander-accused-atrocities-reportedly-living-in-minnesota/?test=latestnews#ixzz2WEAzRIvD[/url] [/QUOTE] Interesting read, never knew a lot of this stuff about Ukraine.

I'm surprised he is still alive. PS: You might wanna cut your article in half.

good point

I hate how the guy just wanted to humiliate him when he's so old now and clearly wants to move on with his life, I mean, he did some atrocious crimes, but who knows for what reasons.

[QUOTE=Sinbues;41037649]I hate how the guy just wanted to humiliate him when he's so old now and clearly wants to move on with his life, I mean, he did some atrocious crimes, but who knows for what reasons.[/QUOTE] I don't think we should let people, even if it was a long time ago, get away with commanding soldiers to massacre innocent people.

Let him live out the rest of his life. He probably suffers from the acts he commits anyways.

Oh ficken seine das FBI!

[QUOTE=mikerocks;41037678]I don't think we should let people, even if it was a long time ago, get away with commanding soldiers to massacre innocent people.[/QUOTE] What are you gonna do? Put him in prison for a couple of more years? He's 94, who knows why he never said anything, probably because he was afraid of the reaction he would get and is now in fear that people despise him without any sort of explanation.

[QUOTE=erie1555;41037688]Let him live out the rest of his life. He probably suffers from the acts he commits anyways.[/QUOTE] Yeah, this seems like twisting the knife in the wound.

[QUOTE=Sinbues;41037649]I hate how the guy just wanted to humiliate him when he's so old now and clearly wants to move on with his life, I mean, he did some atrocious crimes, but who knows for what reasons.[/QUOTE] Because if you didn't you got shot. You don't blame the person for pulling the trigger, you blame the person who the order came from when superiors were not present. People will say "They had a choice, they didn't have to pull the trigger." but they don't realise that they would have been thrown into prison, tortured, shot, etc for it.

In before someone genuinely thinks we shouldn't put suspected war criminals on trial because they are old and got away with it. jkjk y'all already said that [QUOTE=Sinbues;41037752]That's the point I'm trying to make, that war brought out the worst in people; if this guy didn't follow through with the plan that the Nazi High-Command wanted, who knows what would've happened to not only him but his entire company.[/QUOTE] Yes, someone must have put a gun to his head and told him to become the "founding member of the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion".

[QUOTE=Ereunity;41037731]Because if you didn't you got shot. You don't blame the person for pulling the trigger, you blame the person who the order came from when superiors were not present. People will say "They had a choice, they didn't have to pull the trigger." but they don't realise that they would have been thrown into prison, tortured, shot, etc for it.[/QUOTE] That's the point I'm trying to make, that war brought out the worst in people; if this guy didn't follow through with the plan that the Nazi High-Command wanted, who knows what would've happened to not only him but his entire company.

[QUOTE=Sinbues;41037699]What are you gonna do? Put him in prison for a couple of more years? He's 94, who knows why he never said anything, probably because he was afraid of the reaction he would get and is now in fear that people despise him without any sort of explanation.[/QUOTE] Yeah people typically don't admit their crimes. Nice figuring that out.

This reminds me of a Nazi that got caught near i live. I used to wave at him.

[QUOTE=HighdefGE;41037754]Yeah people typically don't admit their crimes. Nice figuring that out.[/QUOTE] Yeah, thanks, I'm a great detective.

[QUOTE=mikerocks;41037678]I don't think we should let people, even if it was a long time ago, get away with commanding soldiers to massacre innocent people.[/QUOTE] Considering we slap wrists over soldiers in the US military for killing civilians all of the time, your post comes off as extremely hypocritical.

"It's okay to kill people as long as you dont get caught until your old" "He was peer pressured to do it by his superiors, not his fault" God damn you guys will let anything go, there were so many ways he could have avoided the war crimes in his position, it wasn't unheard of.

well what good does prosecuting him do? [editline]14th June 2013[/editline] he's a terrible human being but it doesn't serve the world anything by trying to punish him.

he's going to fucking die in like a month and he's probably suffering from what he's done leave him alone what the fuck is prison going to do.

[QUOTE=Iago;41037793]"It's okay to kill people as long as you dont get caught until your old" "He was peer pressured to do it by his superiors, not his fault" God damn you guys will let anything go, there were so many ways he could have avoided the war crimes in his position, it wasn't unheard of.[/QUOTE] Examples? I'm interested in that.

[QUOTE=Sinbues;41037854]Examples? I'm interested in that.[/QUOTE] [url]www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/11/secondworldwar.germany&sa=U&ei=Y5C7UaC3HpK10AHjrIHYCg&ved=0CBgQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNFxR_OBljPyJLYr7jsy2iz79hxhjA[/url] Theres alot more, and more that are not recorded. I'm amazed how much people think all nazi soldiers were brainwashed completely and had no free will or anything. They were as brainwashed as you watching a election ad on TV.

[QUOTE=Ereunity;41037731]Because if you didn't you got shot. You don't blame the person for pulling the trigger, you blame the person who the order came from when superiors were not present. People will say "They had a choice, they didn't have to pull the trigger." but they don't realise that they would have been thrown into prison, tortured, shot, etc for it.[/QUOTE] They all share the blame; the people who gave the orders and the people who carried them out.

So I guess murderers and scumbags can cheat the system by reaching old age

[QUOTE=CabooseRvB;41038084]So I guess murderers and scumbags can cheat the system by reaching old age and escaping from what they do.[/QUOTE] nah we should just consider ourselves civilized enough that we won't continue with witch hunts that end up trying to punish people without actually gaining any benefit from the proceedings. [editline]14th June 2013[/editline] do we really have such a bloodlust that we feel the need to lock up or murder an old man? no matter how fucking shitty that old man is.

[QUOTE=yawmwen;41037802]well what good does prosecuting him do? [editline]14th June 2013[/editline] he's a terrible human being but it doesn't serve the world anything by trying to punish him.[/QUOTE] really enforcing the law is about punishment now

[QUOTE=CabooseRvB;41038084]So I guess murderers and scumbags can cheat the system by reaching old age[/QUOTE] he is Ukrainian, so he was most likely forced into service otherwise his entire family would've been killed. would you be saying the same thing if you were in his situation?

[QUOTE=POLOPOZOZO;41038170]really enforcing the law is about punishment now[/QUOTE] we aren't enforcing the law by chasing him. if we actually enforced the law our presidents would be hanging in the gallows right next to every nazi murderer. we just want something to hunt, someone to be a universal bad guy we can hate and punish.

[QUOTE=yawmwen;41038105]nah we should just consider ourselves civilized enough that we won't continue with witch hunts that end up trying to punish people without actually gaining any benefit from the proceedings. [editline]14th June 2013[/editline] do we really have such a bloodlust that we feel the need to lock up or murder an old man? no matter how fucking shitty that old man is.[/QUOTE] Implying that I want the geezer on Old Sparky. Having murderers that reached old age and a government showing them sympathy destroys the whole point of having a justice system up in the first place. They need to answer for their crimes. I don't care if he had waking nightmares of his actions, he had decades to answer to himself, but that's vastly different from answering to the people he directly affected.

[QUOTE=CabooseRvB;41038222]Implying that I want the geezer on Old Sparky. Having murderers that reached old age and a government showing them sympathy destroys the whole point of having a justice system up in the first place. They need to answer for their crimes. I don't care if he had waking nightmares of his actions, he had decades to answer to himself, but that's vastly different from answering to the people he directly affected.[/QUOTE] i don't disagree. let him answer for his crimes, to the people he directly and indirectly hurt. don't prosecute him though. it's a waste of time and we get nothing out of it.

[QUOTE=Ninja Duck;41038051]They all share the blame; the people who gave the orders and the people who carried them out.[/QUOTE] Are you saying that you would have refused to follow your orders and die pointlessly? If you didn't follow your orders then the people you were told to kill would likely have been killed anyway, the only difference would be that your corpse would be amongst the dead too.