Michael Karkoc's Petition for Naturalization obtained via FOIA by the Associated Press. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – In its annual Nazi-hunting report, the Simon Wiesenthal Center downgraded America’s efforts from A to B, marking the first time that the U.S. has been ranked that low in the report.

According to prominent Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, the U.S. ranking was lowered in part because America did not take any action against Michael Karkoc, who was living in Minnesota and was found to have commanded an SS unit in an investigation by the Associated Press in 2013.

Afterward, Germany began its own investigation into Karkoc and determined that he had commanded a hunt that allegedly involved the burning of villages filled with women and children. The investigation also found that Karkoc lied to immigration officials in order to get into the U.S. several years after World War II.

The Wiesenthal Center’s report also praised Germany for loosening the rules on the prosecution of former Nazis.