Mikhail Gorshkow
Mikhail Gorshkow (1923–2013)[1] was an Estonian citizen accused by the US Justice Department of having assisted in the murder of Jews in Belarus during World War II. He fled the United States for Estonia upon being investigated for his wartime activity; his American citizenship was revoked in 2002.[2]
He allegedly served as an interpreter and interrogator for a Gestapo unit that killed at least 3,000 Jews in the Belarusian city of Slutsk in 1942 and 1943.[3]
An ethnic Russian born in 1923 in Estonia, Gorshkow became a United States citizen in 1963. In 2002, after the state of Florida stripped Gorshkow of his US citizenship for having lied to immigration officials fifty years earlier about his Nazi past, Gorshkow returned to Estonia. On the basis of the evidence handed over by the United States Department of Justice in 2003, Jüri Pihl, the Attorney General of the Republic of Estonia, opened an investigation into Gorshkow's alleged participation in war crimes in the Slutsk ghetto in 1943. The investigation was closed in October 2011 due to inconclusive evidence. According to the Office of the Prosecutor General, the possibility that more than one person with the surname Gorshkow collaborated with the Nazis could not be eliminated beyond reasonable doubt.[4]
References
- ^ "BBC NEWS - Special Reports - The race to bring Nazis to justice".
- ^ "Nazi War Criminals who hid out in South America".
- ^ "#446: 07-31-02 FEDERAL COURT REVOKES U.S. CITIZENSHIP OF FORMER GESTAPO INTERROGATOR WHO PARTICIPATED IN NAZI MASS MURDER".
- ^ "Eesti kodaniku seotust juutide mõrvamisega ei tuvastatud" Archived 2012-07-16 at archive.today.(in Estonian) Eesti Rahvusringhääling, October 24, 2011.