[November 18, 2013]BERLIN (AP) — 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.
In June, an AP investigation found that Michael Karkoc entered the
U.S. 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 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. The
major, slain by resistance fighters, led the Ukrainian Self Defense
Legion, in which Karkoc was a company commander.
A German roster of the unit confirms that Pvt. Ivan Sharko, a
Ukrainian, served under Karkoc's command at the time.
An initial order was given by a separate officer, Sharko testified,
before Karkoc told his unit to attack the village.
"The command was given by one of the commanders to cordon off the
village and prepare for battle," Sharko said, according to the
Russian-language investigative file, which bears the stamp of
Ukraine's Volyn regional prosecutors' office. "The commander of our
company, Wolf, also gave the command to cordon off the village and
check all the houses, and to find and punish the partisans." Karkoc
fought under the wartime nom de guerre "Wolf," and he wrote a 1995
Ukrainian-language war memoir under both his real name and the
pseudonym "Wolf."
According to the document, Sharko described how nobody was spared in
the ferocious onslaught on Chlanow.
"The legionaries surrounded the homes, set fire to them with
matches, or with incendiary bullets, and they shot anyone who was
found in the homes or anywhere in the streets," Sharko said. "Most
of the houses were burned as a result of this action. How many
people were killed in all, I don't know. I personally saw three
corpses of peaceful inhabitants who had been killed."
The AP learned of the file's existence after its initial report and
subsequently tracked down and reviewed its contents.
Other eyewitness accounts, both from villagers and members of
Karkoc's unit, corroborate the testimony that the company set
buildings on fire and gunned down more than 40 men, women and
children.
Karkoc's son and family spokesman, Andriy Karkos, has denied his
94-year-old father's involvement in the Chlaniow incident or any
other possible war crime. Michael Karkoc continues to live quietly
in Minneapolis as he has for decades.
He refused to comment on the Sharko testimony when reached by phone:
"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.
In July, weeks after Karkoc's commanding role in the SS-led Legion
was revealed, Karkos questioned the statements from men in his
father's unit and comments in his father's memoir suggesting he was
at the scene. He was cited by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as saying
his father told him he was not in Chlaniow when the killings took
place, and wrote in a letter to the same newspaper that his father
was no war criminal.
"There is no record that Karkoc had a hand in any war crimes,"
Karkos wrote. "He did nothing wrong. He never lied. He's not afraid
of the truth."
Stephen Paskey, who led Nazi investigations for nine years as a
prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Special
Investigations, said the Sharko testimony is highly credible and
should bolster cases in Germany and Poland to launch prosecutions
against Karkoc. He noted that Sharko did not appear to be in custody
or under investigation at the time of his questioning, and that many
of his statements are confirmed by historical documents.
"I see no reason to doubt that is what (Sharko) said and that it was
said without any pressure," said Paskey, now a law professor at the
SUNY Buffalo Law School. "And that's exactly the sort of thing that
would help persuade a judge that it's credible — that there's other
evidence to corroborate the other things that he said. ... There's
no indication in the Soviet statement that the guy they were
interviewing had a motive to lie."
Since the initial report, both German and Polish prosecutors have
opened investigations into whether to charge Karkoc with war crimes,
based on the fact he had "command responsibility" for his unit when
it committed massacres. Karkoc was a founding member of the SS-led
Ukrainian Self Defense Legion and later an officer in the SS
Galician Division.
Germany has in recent years taken the position that people suspected
of Nazi crimes must be prosecuted, no matter how old or infirm, as
it did in the case of retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk, who
died last year at age 91 while appealing his conviction as a guard
at the Sobibor death camp.
Thomas Will, who is deputy head of Germany's special prosecutors'
office that investigates Nazi crimes, said he is working
"intensively" to conclude his probe as soon as possible, especially
in view of Karkoc's advanced age.
Polish prosecutors said their investigation was ongoing — and that
they have told the Foreign Ministry they need to ask "the American
side to question (Karkoc) in the capacity of a suspect." They
referred further queries to the ministry, which did not respond to
requests for comment.
The U.S. Department of Justice refused to comment on whether it had
initiated its own investigation or was aiding the Polish
investigation.
"The Department of Justice is aware of the allegations, which have
been widely published," spokesman Peter Carr wrote in an email. "We
generally do not confirm nor deny whether an individual is under
investigation."
Even without the Sharko testimony there is a case against Karkoc
from the evidence uncovered in the initial report, Paskey said.
"If he gave the order, there's no question he's guilty of war
crimes," Paskey said in a telephone interview. "Even if he didn't
give the order, as the commander in the area, it was his
responsibility — if he knew about it to stop it, and if he learned
about it after to investigate it and punish those responsible.
That's what command responsibility is."
Other soldiers who served under Karkoc back up Sharko's testimony
about civilian killings: Vasyl Malazhenski, also a private, told
Soviet investigators that in 1944 that unit was directed to
"liquidate all the residents" of Chlaniow — although he did not say
who gave the order.
Sharko also testified in the investigative documents that Karkoc's
company was directly involved in a "punitive mission" against Poles
near the village of Sagryn in 1944.
"We were told that Poles had attacked the village of Sagryn and were
killing Ukrainian families," Sharko said. "And that's why we had to
defend the families of Ukrainians and take revenge against the
Poles."
Sharko made his statements to authorities in Ukraine in 1967 and
1968 for an investigation they were conducting against the Self
Defense Legion. The documents noted he was living at the time in the
village of Vorchin in Ukraine. Local official Oleksandr Petrovich
said Sharko had been a resident, and died in the mid-1980s.
Many of Sharko's statements are backed up by other evidence and
historical fact, giving weight to the overall testimony, said
University of Ottawa professor Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-born
political scientist who has done extensive research on the Self
Defense Legion.
"I analyzed several hundred such Soviet-era investigative cases for
my academic research projects," he said. "Based on this research and
direct or indirect corroboration of information from the Sharko's
testimony by other sources — including the Karkoc memoirs, his
testimony concerning the Legion, massacres that it committed, and
the involvement of Michael Karkoc in the specific massacre — looks
credible."
Nataliya Vasilyeva in
Moscow, Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Monica Scislowska in Warsaw,
David McHugh in Frankfurt, and Mark Rachkevych in Kiev, Ukraine,
contributed to this report. Herschaft reported from New York.
In June, an AP investigation found that Michael Karkoc entered the
U.S. 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 did not uncover evidence linking him directly to atrocities.
