Here We Go Again!

By Dr. Myron Kuropas

Remember Ivan Demjanjuk? Sure you do. A Ukrainian-American immigrant, the U.S. Department of Justice accused him of being a “Nazi” war criminal. He was deported to Israel where five witnesses identified him as “Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka’’. The Soviets provided a Nazi ID card to confirm the identity. Turns out Demjanjuk was neither a Nazi nor terrible. The Israelis returned him to the U.S.

Embarrassed, the U.S. Justice Department convinced Germany that Demjanjuk was involved in the death of thousands of Dutch Jews at Sobibor. There were no witnesses, only the I.D. card which the FBI eventually declared a fraud. Demjanjuk was convicted. He died while his appeal was pending, still technically innocent.

Now we have another Ukrainian so-called “Nazi.” An AP story of June 14 identified Michael Karkoc as a “commander of a Nazi-led unit,” and later as an officer in the SS Galician division which was “involved in Nazi suppression of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.”

“Though records do not show that Karkoc had a direct hand in war crimes,” the AP reported, the “Galician Division and a Ukrainian nationalist organization which he served in were both on a secret American government blacklist of organizations whose members were forbidden from entering the United States...” The AP mentioned a 1995 Ukrainian-language memoir in which “Karkoc states that he helped found the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion in collaboration with the Nazis’ feared SS intelligence agency, the SD...”

The AP reported Karkoc’s unit “is blamed for burning villages filled with women and children... One of Karkoc’s men, Vasyl Malazhenski, told Soviet investigators that in 1944 the unit was directed to ‘liquidate all the residents’ of the village of Chlaniow, Poland, in a reprisal attack for the killing of a German SS officer, though he did not say who gave the order.” Stanislowa Lipska, a resident of Chlianow, also interviewed by the Soviets, mentioned hearing machine-gun fire and grenade explosions during the attack. “They were making sure no one escaped,” she testified.

The AP article also mentioned Karkoc’s membership in the Ukrainian National Association (UNA) and his long-time involvement in Ukrainian American community affairs.

In his 1995 memoir, From Voronizh to the Ukrainian Self-Defence Legion, Karkoc affirmed his membership as an officer in both the Ukrainian Legion and the Galicia Division.

The mass media pounced on the story of the “hidden Nazi”. The most lurid headline was that of The Guardian Express (June 15): “Michael Karkoc 94 Year Old Nazi SS Baby Killer Identified.” Mountebank Eli Rosenbaum, former head of the Office of Special Investigations and arrogant architect of the Demjanjuk debacle, was impelled to chime in as well. “Karkoc’s former unit, the Ukrainian Self-Defense Legion, was involved in numerous documented atrocities during World War II...,” he declared on June 25, gleefully mentioning that Karkoc was Ukrainian Orthodox. “Like so many others of similar background, he appears to have lied about his Nazi past...” Of similar background? I’ve known Rosenbaum for years. He remains a poster-boy for the Ukrainophobic corner of the Jewish community, contemptuously dismissive of the truth.

Various “concerned” people called the UNA asking why the organization was “harboring war criminals.” UNA legal counsel nixed a tough rejoinder, finally approving a Sergeant Schulz (“I know nothing”) response.

I’ve also known Michael Karkoc for years, not only as a UNA member but also as a patriotic member of the Organization for the Rebirth of Ukraine (ODWU). I have recently read his memoirs. So what are the facts as I understand them?

Michael Karkoc is not a “Nazi”. No Ukrainian was ever a Nazi. Membership in the National Socialist Party of Germany was reserved for Germans, preferably “Aryan”. Karkoc was an untermensch, an inferior person. The testimonies of Malazhenski and Lipska were recorded by the Soviets. As such, they are suspect. Aware of Soviet ill will towards Ukrainian nationalists, how can we ever know if their evidence was truthful?

And what about the Waffen SS Galicia Division’s involvement with the Warsaw Uprising? The Polish uprising began on August 1, 1944, and lasted for two months. Recruitment for the division began in June, 1943. Following a year of intensive training, the division was deployed to Brody where on July 15, 1944, the Soviets launched a savage attack. Of the 11,000 original Galician army recruits, 3,000 survived. Michael Karkoc joined the Galicia division after the Battle of Brody.

Throughout his memoirs, Michael Karkoc consistently and unequivocally condemns the Nazi terror he witnessed in Ukraine. To suggest that he helped perpetuate that wanton depravity is something that could only come out of the Demjanjuk playbook of lies and deception.

Like the Demjanjuk family, the Karkoc family is a victim of disinformation by a media that is indolent, truth-deprived, sensation-driven, and unaccountable.