Nazi SS-led unit commander accused of atrocities reportedly living in Minnesota

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http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/0...portedly-living-in-minnesota/?intcmp=trending

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 by the AP through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Galician Division and a Ukrainian nationalist organization he served in were both on a secret American 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 as the company leader. Nazi SS files say he and his unit were also involved in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, in which the Nazis brutally suppressed a Polish rebellion against German occupation.

Polish prosecutors announced Friday after the release of the AP investigation that they will investigate Karkoc and provide "every possible assistance" to the U.S. Department of Justice, which has used lies in immigration papers to deport dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals.

More at link.....
 
Shock lingers after Nazi unit leader found in US

http://www.centurylink.net/news/rea...p-shock_lingers_after_nazi_unit_leader_fou-ap

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The revelation that a former commander of a Nazi SS-led military unit has lived quietly in Minneapolis for the past six decades came as a shock to those who know 94-year-old Michael Karkoc. World War II survivors in both the U.S. and Europe harshly condemned the news and prosecutors in Poland have said they'll investigate.

An Associated Press investigation found that Karkoc served as a top commander in the Ukrainian Self-Defense Legion during World War II. The unit is accused of wartime atrocities, including the burning of villages filled with women and children.

"I know him personally. We talk, laugh. He takes care of his yard and walks with his wife," his next-door neighbor, Gordon Gnasdoskey, said Friday.

"For me, this is a shock. To come to this country and take advantage of its freedoms all of these years, it blows my mind," said Gnasdoskey, the grandson of a Ukrainian immigrant himself..........

More in 6 page article.....
 
Ok, I will probably get flamed but I'm going to say it anyway.

I am truly, truly sorry about the way the Jewish people were persecuted during WWII. It went way past inhumane into the realm of TOTAL EVIL. However, all these perps will soon be dead. It is not healthy to harbor all the hatred. God, karma, or whatever you want to call it will take care of the problem soon.
 
faw720 said:
Ok, I will probably get flamed but I'm going to say it anyway.

I am truly, truly sorry about the way the Jewish people were persecuted during WWII. It went way past inhumane into the realm of TOTAL EVIL. However, all these perps will soon be dead. It is not healthy to harbor all the hatred. God, karma, or whatever you want to call it will take care of the problem soon.
Click to expand...

No flame and that may be one way of looking at it but I don't think the U.S. government or Polish government will give him a break. He was a Nazi and he lied to get into the country and avoid a trial/justice for the atrocities he was in charge of during the war. I think at this point it's more about justice for the ones that died than hatred.
 
Good point. And, I don't think the guy deserves a break. I just don't understand how there could be any sufficient earthly justice for the victims. A justice system in any country is not designed to extract enough justice from any of the Nazis or for that matter, any other of the war criminals.
 
No breaks. No empathy. No anything for this man. I don't care that he's 94. I don't care that he's been here for six decades (seriously, America, with all your spying crap, this D***bag lives here?!?). All these innocents that died, these people in their town and their cities. A nation taken out in a few days. ARGH. Any person who has a living family member with a tattoo on their arm and haunted and devastated for their entire lives because of the actions of men like this....

They DID THIS.

No mercy, no empathy, no anything for them. I won't apologize for being angry, and I won't accept any apologies. This man lived out his life gardening and being happy in THIS COUNTRY.

Does anyone else feel like WTF?!?!

Wy zasługujecie tego (you deserve it)

Always, MOO
 
IMO no apology needed for being angry. It's just my opinion that hate hurts the hater worse than it hurts the hated. Again, just IMO, hates eats away at the heart & soul of the person hating & solves & resolves nothing.
 
I wonder how someone like that sleeps at night? I wonder if he's consumed by guilt or couldn't care less? I wonder what his dreams are like? I wonder if he convinced himself that he was simply following orders?
I don't know how anyone with a conscious doesn't swallow the end of a gun.
 
Agh. This issue creates a lot of turmoil in my head.. I find myself arguing - with myself.. :B

On one hand, I do not think this man ought to be permitted to continue to evade the justice he ran from and just because he did so illegally for X amount of years is not, IMO, adequate grounds for just forgetting about it and letting him live in peace. He did what he did, and ought to pay for it. The families affected by his decisions and actions need to know the death and suffering of their loves ones matters to the world, and that justice isn't so easily avoided.

BUT. I have to wonder - what about the families of all the many civilians slaughtered by Australian, English and American troops, all the villages wiped out in Vietnam, all the Iraqi children blown to smithereens (that we are permitted to know about).. Where does "collateral damage" become "war crime" and where does it not? Is this perception based on what side of the war one happens to be sitting on?

Is it fair for people to rally against one man who committed a bunch of atrocities in a situation where the majority of our society are inclined to disapprove, while lauding as heroes those of our own men who did exactly the same sort of killing but were "just following orders" or "doing their jobs defending our country" (from little kids.. eh)

Not making any particular stand here, certainly not defending this old Nazi, but just posing a tough question that bothers me every time I read something like this.
 
I suppose I would argue that the systematic plan to exterminate millions of people (that succeeded in exterminating MILLIONS of people) goes far behind casualties or even atrocities of war. It certainly does not fall under the heading of collateral damage.

I think we are, generationally, losing sight of what the Holocaust actually was. It was extremely well-documented; I'd urge anyone who's only peripherally aware of it to do some research. Just start with the main wikipedia page. It's far worse than anything you will read on WS. It's far worse than anything you will read in ten years' worth of WS. But if we're reaching the "let bygones be bygones" stage, I fear for the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
 
I am fairly certain you've missed my point, but never mind.

I agree, re the Holocaust, that its scale, purpose and consequences as well as its victims should never be forgotten, at the very least to make sure nothing like it is ever permitted to happen again.
 
Ausgirl said:
I am fairly certain you've missed my point, but never mind.

I agree, re the Holocaust, that its scale, purpose and consequences as well as its victims should never be forgotten, at the very least to make sure nothing like it is ever permitted to happen again.
Click to expand...

I get you.
 
Linda7NJ said:
I get you.
Click to expand...

As do I.

I think if there is any forgetting of the scope and horror of the Holocaust, it is on the part of our governments, and those who support the war machine.

The callous disregard for human life at the bottom of both the holocaust, and those who dismiss or arent much bothered by the death toll in the middle eastern wars of the last decade (two? Three?) is the same.

While arguably the deliberate plan to exterminate the entire race of Jews on the part of Nazi Germany is worse, there is a disregard for the welfare of the Arab population of the middle east amongst much of the American public that, while maybe not deliberate to the extent that the Nazi plan was, is extremely troublesome in the same sort of way. I think there are many in the US who would happily see these people wiped out (seen, over the years, in statements such as "bomb them to hell", "drop a bunch of nukes on Mecca", or "turn the whole place into a parking lot").

I won't speak for the public in our allies' (UK, Aus, etc) countries, just relating what I've seen and heard here in the US.

I think this old man must be called to answer for his crimes - I am doubtful that putting him in prison will be much of a help/statement/service of justice, but at the very least he should be publicly charged, and made to answer the accusations.

Ad without getting too political, I think there are many other war criminals living in the US, whose crimes are much more recent, who should also be called to answer for what they've done. :twocents:
 
inthedark14 said:
No breaks. No empathy. No anything for this man. I don't care that he's 94. I don't care that he's been here for six decades (seriously, America, with all your spying crap, this D***bag lives here?!?). All these innocents that died, these people in their town and their cities. A nation taken out in a few days. ARGH. Any person who has a living family member with a tattoo on their arm and haunted and devastated for their entire lives because of the actions of men like this....

They DID THIS.

No mercy, no empathy, no anything for them. I won't apologize for being angry, and I won't accept any apologies. This man lived out his life gardening and being happy in THIS COUNTRY.

Does anyone else feel like WTF?!?!

Wy zasługujecie tego (you deserve it)

Always, MOO
Click to expand...

I couldn't have said it better. I don't get the people who say "they're XX old, just let them die".

Obviously he had a desire to live a peaceful life, since he's done that for decades now. Take the peaceful life away.

I wonder if people would be so quick to excuse it if DNA solved a decades-old unsolved case where the murderer was still alive.
 
Ausgirl said:
Where does "collateral damage" become "war crime" and where does it not? Is this perception based on what side of the war one happens to be sitting on?
Click to expand...

At the point where there is a well documented and verified, systematic desire to exterminate certain populations of people simply for being who they are.
 
Oh, I "get" it, I just disagree with taking the Holocaust and turning it into a referendum on your dissatisfaction with your current government. "Bad things are happening now, therefore let us downplay the *unbelievably* bad things that happened before" is the specific logic I disagree with.
 
But no one has downplayed anything. The majority have said that the man should at least answer for his crimes, if not deported/jailed/various other punishments.

If we are to not forget, and learn from the Holocaust, should we not at least use it as a "standard", of sorts, by which to examine our nations' own behavior and attitudes during wartime?

If it does not become a lesson, what good then is the remembering? Part of "never forget" is to be ever-watchful to never to let it happen again.
 
He needs to be deported and face justice. I do not care how old he is.
 
Ausgirl said:
I am fairly certain you've missed my point, but never mind.

I agree, re the Holocaust, that its scale, purpose and consequences as well as its victims should never be forgotten, at the very least to make sure nothing like it is ever permitted to happen again.
Click to expand...

I, for one, will never forget it. I started first grade in 1945 just after the war had ended. Shortly thereafter a couple of soldiers came to the school to show a film to the entire school including elementary school. The film showed the liberation of the German concentration camps, stacks of bodies being bulldozed into mass graves, the ovens complete with partially burned bodies, & the starved survivors. No 6 year old is likely to forget that & I know I never have! Now days there are parental warnings on programs like this when one is watching the History Channel.
 
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