MINNEAPOLIS -- The family of a Minneapolis man allegedly linked to a World War II attack on a Polish village said Thursday an impartial probe of the case is welcomed.
Germany's Federal Court of Justice ruled Thursday that German prosecutors do have jurisdiction to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute Michael Karkoc, a 95-year-old Ukrainian immigrant and retired carpenter who has lived in Minnesota since 1950.
"The Karkoc family welcomes any fair and impartial investigation of AP's slanderous allegations against our father, something we stated almost a year ago when these lies were originally published," Andrij Karkoc, the son of Michael Karkoc, told KARE.
"We also encourage and welcome any independent journalistic review of those charges."
The Associated Press reported in 2013 that Michael Karkoc could be placed in the vicinity of the farming village of Chlaniow, Poland in July of 1944 when armed militants murdered dozens of civilians there, according to documents found by an amateur Nazi hunter in Great Britain.
Karkoc doesn't dispute he was a member of the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion during the war. In a memoir he published in 1995 in his native tongue, Karkoc talked about waging guerrilla style warfare against Soviets and some Polish resistance groups.
The AP account said the attack on the village was in retaliation for the murder of German SS Officer Siegried Assmuss by Polish resistance fighters. According to the AP Karkoc commented on the death of Assmuss in his memoir, but didn't mention the attack on Chlaniow.
In 1972 Polish authorities prosecuted another Ukrainian fighter, Teodozy Dak, for taking part in the Chlaniow massacre. Dak was convicted and died in prison.
A follow-up AP report cited a statement made by Ukrainian veteran Ivan Sharko to Soviet authorities in 1968, claiming that Karkoc ordered the attack. Sharko died in 1993.
The German court, in determining that Germany had jurisdiction to pursue a Ukrainian for a war crime that happened in Poland, asserted that Karkoc was the "holder of a German office" because the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion was reportedly working in collaboration with the German SS.
SS stood for Schutzstaffel, or "protective squadron." It began as the armed enforcement wing of the Nazi Party and grew to at least 38 divisions during World War II. The SS were more directly involved in the Holocaust and other actions against civilians.
And, because of the connection between the SS and the self defense legion, the court reasoned that any leader in that Ukrainian contingent "served the purposes of the Nazi state's world view."
Prosecutors based in Munich must still look at the evidence unearthed by the Associated Press and decide whether formal charges are warranted.
"It seems strange that a nation which planned, organized and executed the Holocaust can now claim the legal or moral right to judge someone who isn't German, never hurt a German and never committed a crime on German (or Polish for that matter) soil," Andrij Karkoc told KARE.
"Nonetheless, we welcome any efforts that will help expose the truth: that Michael Karkoc is an innocent man and AP's maliciously manufactured smears will eventually be proven to be just that."
Andrij Karkoc also asked aloud if the German court could now use the same reasoning to find jurisdiction to prosecute Russian president Vladimir Putin for the recent invasion and occupation of the Crimea region of Ukraine.
It's not known what role, if any, Russian authorities have played in assisting journalists and German prosecutors investigating Michael Karkoc. But Putin, as part of his justification for intervening in Ukraine's political turmoil, referred to the anti-Russian Ukrainian leaders as neo-Nazi's.
Karkoc's family members dispute the notion that the Ukrainian Defense Legion was under the command of the SS, and bristle at the AP's shorthand description of Karkoc's group as a "SS led unit."
Andrij Karkoc asserts that the murdered German officer Siegfried Assmuss was a liaison between the Ukrainian fighters and the German soldiers who were occupying Poland at the time, and not the commander of the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion active near Chlaniow, Poland at the time.
But Karkoc, who raised six children, remained politically active in the Ukrainian fight for independence after arriving in the US. But, as a result of the AP probe, Karkoc may face immigration issues as well.
The AP's investigation found that Karkoc did not list any military service in his immigration paperwork, when he was processed by US Army personnel at a displaced person's camp in Neu Ulm, Germany in 1949. American officers filled out the document, which was written in English.
At the time Karkoc was trying to leave Europe a treaty allowed the Soviet Union to forcibly repatriate and imprison those who were found to be leaders in the resistance against the Russian forces. And, according to the AP, the United States immigration policy was to deny visas to members of the Ukrainian Nationalist Group OUN and members of the SS Galicia Division.
That Germany military unit, made up ethnic Ukrainians, also known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, was active in repressing people in occupied Poland. But the 14th Waffen SS was badly defeated by the Red Army in the summer of 1944 in the Battle of Brody.
Remnants of the SS Galicia Division joined with the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion in 1945 to organize as the 1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army, which then engaged with the Soviet forces in Yugoslavia, Austria and Slovakia.
Andrij Karkoc said his father was never a member of the SS Galicia Division. He said at the onset of the war his father fled his home village of Horodok in western Ukraine and went to live with other Ukrainian refugees in Poland.
While in Poland the Germans conscripted his father, then 20 years old, into the German army. Karkoc was part of the invasion of Ukraine, but deserted the German army after witnessing a German concentration camp for captured Soviets.
At that point, according to his son, Karkoc joined the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion.
Andrij Karkoc said that the Germans, upon learning his father had joined the Ukrainian underground, executed 12 civilians in his home town of Horodok. Much later in life Michael Karkoc paid for a monument to those who were murdered by the Nazis in Horodok.
