Sixty-eight years after the end of World War II an investigation by the Associated Press has discovered that a commander of a Nazi SS unit has been living in Minnesota for the past 60 years. Michael Karkoc, 94, lied to American authorities when he entered the country in 1949 saying that he had not fought during the war.
In reality Karkoc had been a commander of the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion as well as an officer in the SS Galician division; members of both groups were supposed to be denied entry into the U.S. according to a secret government blacklist, the Associated Press reports.
The units that Karkoc belonged to have been accused of more than a few atrocities; among them the burning of villages filled with women and children and the brutal suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. Records do not clearly indicate that Karkoc was directly involved in any war crimes but it can be assumed that as the leader of these SS units that he was present at the time.
Efraim Zuroff from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem told the Associated Press that there appears to be enough evidence against Karkoc to have him deported to Germany or Poland to be tried for war crimes.
"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."
Vasyl Malazhenski, a soldier who served under Karkoc, told Soviet investigators that his unit had been order to "liquidate all the residents" of a village in retaliation for the killing of an SS officer.
"It was all like a trance: setting the fires, the shooting, the destroying," Malazhenski said, according to a 1967 statement found by the Associated Press. "Later, when we were passing in file through the destroyed village I could see the dead bodies of the killed residents: men, women, children."
Karkoc has admitted to collaborating with the Nazis in a Ukrainian-language memoir that he published in 1995. That memoir helped Stephen Ankier, a British pharmacologist who researches Nazi war crimes in his spare time, come across an address for Karkoc which he then passed along to the Associated Press.
"Here was a chance to publicly confront a man who commanded a company alleged to be involved in the cruel murder of innocent people," Ankier said.
Records indicate that Karkoc's wife died in 1948, one year before Karkoc emigrated to the U.S. with his two young sons. Once Karkoc arrived in Minneapolis he remarried and had four more children. Karkoc told American officials that he was a carpenter when he entered the country, according to the Associated Press.
Polish prosecutors have announced that they will conduct an investigation into whether or not Karkoc should be tried as a war criminal. Poland's National Rememberance Institute said they will provide "every possible assistance" to the U.S. justice system which has deported dozens of former Nazis for lying on immigration papers, the Associated Press reports.
*This article has been updated to note a development.
