BERLIN — A retired Minnesota carpenter, shown in a June investigation to be a former commander in a Nazi SS-led unit, ordered his men to attack a Polish village that was razed to the ground, according to testimony newly uncovered by The Associated Press. The account of the massacre that killed dozens of women and children contradicts statements by the man’s family that he was never at the scene of the 1944 bloodshed.
The June story prompted official investigations in Poland and Germany. On Monday, the prosecutor leading Germany’s probe said he has decided to recommend that state prosecutors pursue murder charges against 94-year-old Michael Karkoc.
Thomas Will, the deputy leader of the special prosecutors’ office that investigates Nazi crimes, said he had made his decision even before seeing the new testimony that Karkoc ordered his unit to attack the Polish village of Chlaniow.
AP’s initial investigation found that Karkoc entered the United States in 1949 by failing to disclose to American authorities his role as a commander in the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion, which is accused of torching villages and killing civilians in Poland. The investigation found that Karkoc was in the area of the massacres, but it did not uncover evidence linking him directly to atrocities.
However, a newly unearthed investigative file originally from the Ukrainian intelligence agency’s archive reveals that a private under Karkoc’s command testified in 1968 that Karkoc ordered the assault on Chlaniow in retaliation for the slaying of an SS major.
A German roster of the unit confirms that Pvt. Ivan Sharko, a Ukrainian, served under Karkoc’s command at the time.
Eyewitness accounts from villagers and members of Karkoc’s unit corroborate Sharko’s testimony.
Karkoc’s son and family spokesman, Andriy Karkos,
who spells his surname differently from his father, said “until and unless The Associated Press can provide their alleged evidence and their witness, we will not respond to your defamatory and slanderous allegation,” he said Friday.
Sharko died in the 1980s.
