Documents indicate that Michael Karkoc, 94, was a top commander of a Nazi SS-led unit accused of burning villages filled with women and children during World War II
AJW Staff Report
The Associated Press (AP) has published an investigative report identifying 94-year-old Michael Karkoc, of Minneapolis, as a top commander of a Nazi SS-led unit in the Ukraine and Poland during World War II.
The AP story, by David Rising, Randy Herschaft and Monika Scislowska, found that Karkoc lied to American immigration officials in 1949, saying that he had performed no military service during the war in order to enter the United States The records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, now show that Karkoc concealed 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.
The Galician Division and a Ukrainian nationalist organization in which he served were both on a secret American blacklist of organizations whose members were forbidden from entering the U.S. at the time.
Though no records indicate that Karkoc had a direct hand in war crimes, statements from men in his unit, and payroll and other documentation show the Ukrainian company he commanded massacred civilians, including setting fire to villages filled with women and children, and suggest he was at the scene. Nazi SS files also say Karkoc and his unit were involved in the “brutal suppression” of the 1944 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The AP reached Karkoc at his northeast Minneapolis home, located in an area with a significant Ukrainian population, though he refused to discuss his wartime service.
“I don’t think I can explain,” he told the AP.
In response to the AP report, Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), released a statement saying that the organization was “shocked and appalled” to learn that Karkoc has been living in Minnesota for more than 60 years.
“As the principal Minnesota Jewish agency responsible for educating about the millions of all faiths who perished and honoring the survivors of Nazi persecution by focusing on local survivor testimony, words fail to express how outraged we are to learn this morning that an alleged former Nazi SS commander could be hiding in plain sight in a community, which is also the home of so many Holocaust survivors and their liberators in the United States armed forces,” Hunegs said.
The JCRC is calling on its colleagues in the U.S. Department of Justice to “investigate the claims made in the Associated Press report, and if proven true, to open a civil deportation hearing so that Mr. Karkoc can finally face some measure of justice for his crimes against humanity.”
The Justice Department has used lies about wartime service made in immigration papers to deport dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals in the past.
The AP story has also piqued the interest of German authorities that wish to explore whether there is enough evidence to prosecute Karkoc. In Germany, Nazis with “command responsibility” can be charged with war crimes event if their direct involvement cannot be proven.
Efraim Zuroff, the lead Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, said that the evidence showing Karkoc lied to American officials is strong enough for deportation and war-crimes prosecution.
“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 told the AP. “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.”
Karkoc did publish a Ukrainian-language memoir in 1995, in which he stated that he helped found the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion in 1943, in collaboration with the Nazis’ SS intelligence agency, the SD, to fight on the side of Germany, and served as a company commander in the unit, which received orders from the SS until the end of World War II.
The memoir is available at the U.S. Library of Congress and the British Library. The AP located it online in an electronic Ukrainian library.
Karkoc’s case came to light when his name surfaced in Nazi war crimes research undertaken by a retired clinical pharmacologist, who tipped off the AP when an Internet search showed an address for Karkoc in Minnesota.
The AP located Karkoc’s U.S. Army Intelligence file and got it declassified by the National Archives in Maryland through the Freedom of Information Act. While the file stated that standard background checks with seven different agencies found no red flags, it noted that it lacked key information: “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.”
Karkoc was born in 1919 and joined the regular German army after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. He fought on the Eastern Front in Ukraine and Russia, and was awarded an Iron Cross, a Nazi award for bravery.
After the war, Karkoc was in a camp for displaced people in Neu Ulm, Germany. He and his wife had two boys, born in 1945 and 1946; Karkoc’s wife died in 1948.
After he arrived in Minneapolis, Karkoc remarried and had four more children. He told American officials he was a carpenter and records indicate he worked for a nationwide construction company.
The AP story further noted that Karkoc was a member of the Ukrainian National Association and has been closely involved in community affairs.
Here is the video posted on YouTube by Associated Press:
