98-year-old charged with 'unlawful execution, torture' of Jews during World War II

Prosecutors on Tuesday charged a 98-year-old who features on Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center’s wanted list with war crimes, saying he had helped to deport Jews to Auschwitz in World War II.

Laszlo Csatary was found guilty in absentia in 1948 of whipping or torturing Jews and helping to deport them to the death camp while serving as police commander in the Nazi-occupied eastern Slovak city of Kosice in 1944.

The Hungarian was sentenced to death and lived on the run for decades until Hungarian authorities detained him and put him under house arrest in Budapest in July last year. He has denied any guilt.

June 18, 2013, 1:01pm / 36

Michael Karkoc, Minnesota Man, Was Top Commander Of Nazi SS-Led Unit:

A top commander of a Nazi SS-led unit accused of burning villages filled with women and children lied to American immigration officials to get into the United States and has been living in Minnesota since shortly after World War II, according to evidence uncovered by The Associated Press.

Michael Karkoc, 94, told American authorities in 1949 that he had performed no military service during World War II, concealing his work as an officer and founding member of the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion and later as an officer in the SS Galician Division, according to records obtained by the AP through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Galician Division and a Ukrainian nationalist organization he served in were both on a secret American government blacklist of organizations whose members were forbidden from entering the United States at the time.

June 14, 2013, 12:18pm / 25

The diary of war criminal Alfred Rosenberg has been recovered

The U.S. government has recovered 400 pages from the long-lost diary of Alfred Rosenberg, a confidante of Adolf Hitler who played a central role in the extermination of millions of Jews and others during World War II.

“The documentation is of considerable importance for the study of the Nazi era, including the history of the Holocaust,” said the assessment, prepared by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “A cursory content analysis indicates that the material sheds new light on a number of important issues relating to the Third Reich’s policy. The diary will be an important source of information to historians that compliments, and in part contradicts, already known documentation.”

June 11, 2013, 9:56pm / 59

inothernews:

A woman, identified as Cub Scout troop leader Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, confronts one of two suspects who moments before viciously beheaded a British soldier on a street in London in what government officials called a “terror-related” incident. The attackers had claimed responsibility for the murder, saying on camera “The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth.” Loyau-Kennett, who wasn’t hurt, is also captured on video telling one of the men “Right now it is only you versus many people. You are going to lose.  What would you like to do?”  Both suspects were later killed shot and wounded by police.    (Photo: @sibiillamlaw / Twitter via The New York Daily News)

(via operationkino)

May 22, 2013, 9:11pm / 523

Billionaire buys V-2 Rocket for Settle aviation museum

The eclectic Seattle billionaire Paul Allen has procured a rare Wernher von Braun-designed V-2 rocket, the first human-made object to fly into outer space.

Allen’s Flying Heritage Collection — located at Paine Field in Everett, Wash. — is taking possession of the rocket on Monday. The Mittelwerk GmbH V-2 rocket, one of only 16 in the world, will be assembled at the aircraft museum and then displayed as part of the permanent exhibit. The rocket — assembled from an an underground production facility near Nordhausen, Germany — is one of only six in the U.S. The purchase price was not disclosed.

Germany developed the V-2, and used the aerial weapon in the latter part of World War II against targets in London and Antwerp.

May 19, 2013, 10:32pm / 13