Michael Karkoc, 94, is living quietly in Minneapolis after lying to immigration officials about his Nazi past. AP says Karkoc was a founding member of the Ukrainian Self Defense Legion (31 SD Schutzmannschafts Battalion), commanded by the SS, and later a company officer in the 14th SS-Volunteer Galician Division [right, shoulder emblem] into which the Legion was merged. AP obtained records about Karkoc's Nazi past through a Freedom of Information Act request. Both of these military units were on a secret US immigration blacklist. Former members were forbidden from entering the United States. The records do not show that Karkoc had a direct hand in the massacre of civilians on the Eastern Front, but the Ukrainian company he commanded committed atrocities. SS files also indicate he was present at the 1944 Warsaw Uprising in which Polish people rebelled against Nazi occupation and were brutally liquidated. One of Karkoc's men, Vasyl Malazhenski, told Soviet investigators that in 1944 the unit was directed to liquidate the village of Chlaniow in reprisal for the killing of SS Major Siegfried Assmuss, commander of the battalion. Malazhenski testified to seeing the bodies of men, women and children as he passed in file out of the destroyed village. Another soldier under Karkoc's command according to SS files, Teodozy Dak, was convicted of war crimes in Poland in 1972. He died in prison.German prosecutors are obligated to bring cases against former Nazi commanders even if their personal involvement cannot be proven at this late date, if there is enough "initial suspicion" of war crimes. Josef Scheungraber was convicted in 2009 of murder based on evidence that placed the former lieutenant at the scene of a civilian massacre in Italy. The US Army was responsible for processing visa applications after the war under the Displaced Persons Act, but did not, or could not check his bona fides. Karkoc lied in a 1949 background questionnaire saying he worked for his father until 1944 and then in a labor camp until 1945. However, in a Ukrainian language newspaper published in 1995 and which AP found on-line, Karkoc stated he helped form the Self Defense League in 1943 in collaboration with the SD (Sicherheitdienst), the SS's own intelligence agency. AP was tipped to Karkoc's past by a retired British pharmacologist amusing himself by looking into the background of former members of the SS Galician Division. He found Karkoc's name and an address in Minnesota. Karkoc was contacted by reporters but refused comment saying, "I don't think I can explain." Ukrainian units attached to German forces on the Eastern Front were often used to suppress or kill local populations deemed to be problematic by their German commanders.