Report: Minn. man commanded Nazi-led unit

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 through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Galician Division and a Ukrainian nationalist organization he served in were both on a 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.

Polish prosecutors announced Friday after the release of the AP's findings that they will investigate Karkoc and provide "every possible assistance" to the U.S. Department of Justice. The department, which has used lies in immigration papers to deport suspected Nazi war criminals, declined to comment on Karkoc.

Karkoc now lives in a modest house in northeast Minneapolis. Even at his advanced age, he came to the door without using 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 in the 1967 statement.

In a background check by U.S. officials in 1949, Karkoc said he had never performed military service. However, in a Ukrainian-language memoir in 1995, Karkoc stated he served as a company commander for the Self Defense Legion, which took orders from the SS.