Minnesota Nazi, After more than three decades in existence, the Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting team is facing what could end up being its last investigation after reports emerged Tuesday that a 94-year-old Ukrainian immigrant in Minnesota had led a Nazi SS unit accused of burning villages during World War II.
In northeast Minneapolis, news crews and curious neighbors milled
outside the modest home of Michael Karkoc, who has lived in the United
States for more than 60 years, after a report linked him to a Ukrainian
SS squad.
The Associated Press reported that wartime documents and interviews with
soldiers indicated that Mr. Karkoc commanded a company that massacred
civilians, although the records did not point to his direct hand in war
crimes.
The Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting unit, which since 1979 has
investigated and deported suspected war criminals, refused to say
whether it was investigating Mr. Karkoc. The department has not taken
any legal action against him, documents show, and officials declined to
say whether his case had ever attracted any federal interest.
“While we do not confirm or deny the existence of specific
investigations, I can say as a general matter that the Department of
Justice continues to pursue all credible allegations of participation in
World War II Nazi crimes by U.S. citizens and residents,” said Michael
Passman, a Justice Department spokesman.
Officials in Germany and Poland said they were interested in finding out
more about Mr. Karkoc’s history. Efraim Zuroff, who leads the Israeli
office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center,
one of the most prominent Nazi-hunting groups in the world, said
evidence linking Mr. Karkoc to Nazi activities appeared strong. “This is
a case that is definitely worth pursuing,” Mr. Zuroff said.
The Justice Department has frequently brought cases against people
suspected of being Nazis based on evidence that they lied about their
histories in getting into the United States. The Associated Press report
suggested that Mr. Karkoc had concealed his service as a military
officer when he came to the United States, giving the Justice Department
a potential avenue for inquiry.
Over the years, the Justice Department has denaturalized or deported 107
people with Nazi ties living in the United States, but the cases have
slowed to a trickle in recent years as suspects died or reached their
80s and 90s.
A handful of Nazi investigations remain open, Justice Department officials say. A man who served in a Nazi unit at the Trawniki concentration camp,
who was stripped of his citizenship and ordered deported in 2006, has
remained free in Massachusetts while the United States has sought to
find a country that will accept him.
Mr. Karkoc is an active member of his neighborhood Ukrainian church, and
remains physically active, taking regular walks without the aid of a
cane or walker, and puttering in his garden.
“He was on the ladder the other day cleaning out the gutter,” said Stan Patrick, 70, who lives across the street.
Mr. Patrick suggested that the government should leave Mr. Karkoc alone.
“If they confront him and go through a bunch of hullabaloo, he’ll
probably have a heart attack and die. Just let him go about his
business.”
But other neighbors differed.
“I’m alarmed,” said Carey Tinkelenberg, 29, whose father spent years in a
Japanese-run prison in World War II. “It’s absolutely personal.”
No one answered the phone at Mr. Karkoc’s home on Friday, and a man
there ordered visitors at the door to “stay off the property.”
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