Today, German authorities stopped the prosecution of the 96-year-old commander of the SS Sonder Command "Galicia" of Western Ukrainian origin, Mikhail Karkoc, who destroyed the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
The prosecution was stopped due to the health of the defendant, who is no longer able to stand trial, reports Associated Press.
It is noteworthy that the decision was made on the eve of the anniversary of the tragic suppression of the Warsaw Uprising and the shooting of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Subscribe to the news "PolitNavigator - Kyiv" in Facebook, Classmates or In contact with
Two years ago, the Associated Press found in the United States Mikhail Karkoc, the commander of the SS Sonder Command "Galicia", suspected of exterminating children and women during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.
In 1949, Karkoc immigrated to the United States after being imprisoned in American labor camps in West Germany. Ten years later he became a citizen and still lives in Minnesota.
Karkoc, according to the Associated Press, was a member of the Legion of Western Ukrainian SS volunteers assigned to fight the communist insurgency in German-occupied Ukraine and Poland. AP journalists reviewed documents at the Polish Institute of National Remembrance and found Karkoc's personal files as part of the Galicia division, in particular, in the pay sheet for January 8, 1945 in Krakow.
Karkoc was the commander of the 2nd company in the Legion. This company took part on July 23, 1944 in the punitive and repressive suppression of the village of Chlaniów in retaliation for the murder of a German liaison officer. 44 village residents were killed. In September, Karkoc and his subordinates took part in the fighting against the Warsaw Uprising. At that moment, Warsaw was practically wiped off the face of the earth. After the fall of the uprising, the legion fought in southern Poland, as well as against communist partisans in Slovenia.
In 1995, Karkoc, a US citizen, even wrote a memoir in which he admitted for the first time that he was a member of the SS. He did not, however, mention massacres.
Polish media and human rights activists immediately protested the stop to the prosecution of Mikhail Karkoc.