AP finds Nazi commander, now 94, living in Minnesota

Nobody's acknowledged it, but this is a solid post.

Again, not defending the dude. But there are grounds those in our position today can't identify with why Ukrainians might have sided with Nazis. Stalin had been committing his own atrocities against Ukrainians for years, god only knows how may Ukrainians of that era saw their family members murdered, imprisoned or oppressed by Stalin, and all most knew when the Nazis first came in was that they were fighting against Stalin.

If it's shown that he personally took part in genocide, fry him. But the situation was a bit more complex than folks today realize. The Ukraine was rather uniquely positioned between two historically epic evil forces at the the time, forced to choose between one evil or the other.

 

Unfortunately, I predict he will die of old age in the United States. Any case against him is complicated by the passage of time. He can lawyer up and delay court action by years and years (like Demjanjuk), and run out the clock.

The minimum that would happen is he would be deported to his native Ukraine for not divulging his Nazi past, if there is one. But by doing that, any decision on further prosecution or extradition to Israel, Poland or Germany would be left to the Ukrainians. Therefore, it'll be up to the American courts to sort out the charges and where to extradite him.

 

I hate to be the resident old-Nazi defender here, but it should be noted that Demjanjuk's case was 'delayed' largely because he was extradited to Israel, tried on crimes against humanity, convicted, sentenced to death and then ultimately found to be a victim of mistaken identity! (He was not, as he had long maintained, Ivan the Terrible).

Now, there is fairly conclusive evidence that he was a Nazi who served in camps, which is why he died in Germany awaiting another trial 20 years later, but if anything, his story is a cautionary tale that even accused Nazis are entitled to due process.

 

That's the thing. It seems pretty clear this latest guy was an officer of some sort in the SS, which is grounds for removal of citizenship and expulsion from the U.S. But to prosecute him beyond that would either require the U.S. to hold him or to surrender him to another jurisdiction with standing. Every one of those steps is subject to judicial review and appeal.

 

Ukrainians had been persecuting Jews for years too. So it clearly wasn't that tough a call for them -- they took to it like a fish to water.

 

Let's all be clear on what the investigation has uncovered:

Among the documents uncovered by the AP was a Ukrainian-language memoir written by Karkoc and published in 1995 in which he is oddly frank about his involvement in the war.

Karkoc says he helped found the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion in 1943 in collaboration with the Nazis' SS intelligence agency to fight on the side of Germany. He says the unit received orders directly from the SS.

The Ukrainian Self Defense Legion was folded into the SS Galician Division in 1945, and Karkoc wrote that he remained with it until the end of the war.

More:

Though records cited by the Associated Press do not reveal 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.

In 1944, in retaliation for the killing of an SS officer by anti-Nazi Polish resistance fighters, the unit was directed to "liquidate the residents" of the village of Chlaniow, according to a 1967 statement by one of Karkoc's men, which was found by the AP.

"It was all like a trance: setting the fires, the shooting, the destroying," Vasyl Malazhenski says in the statement. When the unit passed through the destroyed village later, he said, "I could see the dead bodies of the killed residents: men, women, children."

According to Hier, Karkoc's unit also was involved in numerous atrocities during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which the Nazis brutally suppressed a Polish rebellion against German occupation.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/17/justice/minnesota-alleged-nazi

One side of my family is Eastern European. I am very familiar with some of the conflicts in the region. The conflicts come to this land, to my generation, my children's.

I know people had to make choices in the war. I am related to some in the old country who made choices, though not like this to my knowledge:

van Katchanovski, a Ukrainian political scientist who has done extensive research on the Self Defense Legion, said its members have been careful to cultivate the myth that their service to Nazi Germany was solely a fight against Soviet communism. But he said its actions -- fighting partisans and reprisal attacks on civilians -- tell a different story.

"Under the pretext of anti-partisan action they acted as a kind of police unit to suppress and kill or punish the local populations. This became their main mission," said Katchanovski, who went to high school in Pidhaitsi and now teaches at the University of Ottawa in Canada. "There is evidence of clashes with Polish partisans, but most of their clashes were small, and their most visible actions were mass killings of civilians."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/14/nazi-commander-accused-atrocities-reportedly-living-in-minnesota/?test=latestnews#ixzz2WVnZ3fDQ

Give him a fair trial. Present all evidence. Let a decision be rendered.

 

My bet is it never makes it to a trial. And for the reasons FB mentioned earlier. You're dealing with three sets of legal proceedings here, you've got to get the deportation and extradition issues figured out before the war crimes trial process even begins, and imagine the complicating issues his lawyer can raise in the discovery process when you're dealing with 70 year old evidence.

A good lawyer could easily tie this thing in knots with stall ball tactics for years.

 

Whether the man lives to see trial doesn't matter.

Go forward with it for as long as he is alive.

 

He could be stripped of his citizenship without being deported immediately though so they could start with that before they decide where he'd be sent. I seem to recall that being done with Demanjuk.

 

Not sure what's happened in the last four years, but it looks like Poland is stepping up its effort to extradite this guy:

A prosecutor in Poland says that evidence shows without doubt that a Minnesota man was a Nazi unit commander suspected of contributing to the death of 44 Poles.

Robert Janicki said that various evidence gathered in years of investigation into U.S. citizen Michael K. confirmed "100 percent" that he was a World War II commander of a unit in the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion, which is accused of burning villages and killing civilians in Poland.

The Associated Press has identified the man as 98-year-old Michael Karkoc.

Karkoc's family denies that he was involved in any war crimes.

Prosecutors of the state National Remembrance Institute have asked a local court in Poland to issue an arrest warrant for Karkoc. If granted, Poland would seek his extradition, Janicki said.

Poland confirms Minneapolis man as Nazi commander

 

Oh, so now Poland's really serious about trying to extradite and prosecute him--when he's 98 years old? I guess there was no need to put a rush on it when we last visited this thread, you know, since he was a mere 94 at the time.

 

If that's who he is, hang his 98-year-old ass by the neck.

Might be a good time to get back in the habit of killing Nazis. They may be easier to find than we think.