Evidence 'shows Minnesota man was Nazi commander'
March 13, 2017
Prosecutor Robert Janicki said on Monday that evidence gathered over years of investigation into US citizen Michael K. had confirmed "100 percent" that he was a World War Two commander of a unit in the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion (USDL).
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 from the state Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) have asked a local court in Poland to issue an arrest warrant for Karkoc. If granted, Poland will seek his extradition, Janicki said.
Karkoc - who was born in 1919 in Lutsk in Ukraine - was a military officer in the USDL and later in the Waffen-SS during World War Two. He reportedly participated in suppressing the August 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
In June 2013, the Associated Press published an investigative report after a tip off from Nazi war crimes researcher Stephen Ankier, alleging that the man named Michael Karkoc then living in Minneapolis, Minnesota is the same Michael Karkoc who was an "SS commander."
jbh/rc (AP)