Under Our Nose

Nazi Commander Living in MN

Was part of SS-led unit in WWII.

You never know where these will turn up. A top commander of a Nazi SS-led unit lied to U.S. immigration officials about his military service in 1949 in order to get into the United States, and has been living in a heavily Ukrainian town in Minnesota ever since. Michael Karkoc, now 94, was the founder of an SS-led Ukrainian group and later a part of the SS Galician Division. Documents do not show that Karkoc was personally involved in his units’ war crimes, but men from his units said the groups he commanded carried out massacres of civilians and that Karkoc was on the scene for some of those events. Other Nazi documents show he was involved in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which Germany brutally repressed Polish resistance. The AP’s investigation has aroused the interest of German authorities in exploring whether Karkoc can be prosecuted.