WASHINGTON, June 14 (RIA Novosti) – For more than half a century, the head of a Ukrainian Nazi military unit that was accused of civilian massacres during World War II has been openly living in the United States, according to an extensive investigation by The Associated Press (AP).
Statements from soldiers who served in Michael Karkoc’s unit point to his presence at the scene of brutal attacks on men, women and children, including one in 1944 on Chlaniow, Poland, a village in the far east of the country near the Ukrainian border.
The unit was ordered to “liquidate all the residents” of the village, according to a 1967 statement from one of Karkoc’s men to Soviet investigators that was uncovered in Polish government archives by AP.
"It was all like a trance: setting the fires, the shooting, the destroying,” said Vasyl Malazhenski in the statement.
“Later, when we were passing in file through the destroyed village, I could see the dead bodies of the killed residents: men, women, children," he added. He did not say who gave the order, but said it was given in retaliation for the death of a German SS officer.
Karkoc, a native of Ukraine, entered the United States in 1949, telling US officials then that he had worked for his father until 1944, and then worked in a labor camp but had not performed military service, documents uncovered by the AP show.
The records indicate he had been a top commander and founding member of the Nazi SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion (USDL) and an officer in the SS Galician Division, a volunteer Ukrainian unit whose members were blacklisted from entering the United States after the war.
According to the report, Karkoc published a Ukrainian-language memoir in 1995, admitting he had been a USDL commander. A Nazi war crimes researcher located the information and tipped off AP when he found a US address for Karkoc.
Now 94, Karkoc lives in Minnesota. No one answered the phone when RIA Novosti called his home, or responded to a message left seeking to independently verify the information.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted and helped to deport Nazi war criminals found to have entered the US fraudulently. A spokesman did not immediately return a call from RIA Novosti requesting comment, but AP reported that Polish prosecutors have said they would provide “every possible assistance” to DOJ.
The deputy head of the German office that investigates Nazi war crimes – and that appears to have jurisdiction in the Karkoc case – told AP he’s interested in gathering the information that could lead to Karkoc’s prosecution.
