Karl Linnas

Karl Linnas

Karl Linnas was born on August 6, 1919 in Tartu, Estonia.

His Father was, August Linnas the Head of a Printing House and his Mother, Ida (nee Park.)

In 1937 he graduated from the Hugo Treffner Gymnasium in Tartu.

He then went to the University of Tartu and studied Mathematics, but he didn’t graduate.

In 1939, he graduated from the Military School's Infantry Class Course specializing  in heavy machine guns.

In June 1940 Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union and later annexed into the USSR on August 6, 1940.

In 1941 the Soviets deported 10,000 Estonians to Gulags in Central Asia where most died.

The Soviets occupied Estonia until the Nazi German Invasion in June 1941.

In September 1941, Linnas became the Commandant of the Tartu Concentration Camp held this position until January 1942, when Estonia was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ostland (English: 'Reich Commissariat of Eastland.”)

The Tartu Concentration Camp became the largest Concentration Camp and later Extermination Camp in German-Occupied Estonia.

Estonian Jews, Foreign Jews, Communists, Roma and Sinti were held Prisoner in the Tartu Camp.

Linnas had Groups of 30 to 40 People (including the Elderly and Children) brought to the Jalaka Line (an anti-tank ditch) where they were shot and left in the ditch.

Later Linnas had other Prisoners dig-up the dead bodies and burned them.

In December 1941 the Germans had declared Estonia to be “Judenfrei” (English: Free of Jews.)

There had been 4,500 Jews in Estonia before the Soviet and German Occupations.

The Germans and their Estonian Collaborators (like Linnas) murdered 1,000 Estonian Jews.

The rest had been deported by the Soviets to the USSR in 1940 or 1941 or had fled to the USSR by themselves when the Germans invaded in June 1941.

Once the Estonian Jews were murdered the Germans deported around 10,000 Jews from other parts of German-Occupied Europe to German-Occupied Estonia to be killed.

Many of these Foreign Jews went right from the Cattle Trains to their deaths within an hour.

1,000 Roma and Sint were also murdered by the Germans and Estonian Collaborators as were 15,000 Soviet Prisoners-Of-War.

4,000 Men, Women and Children were murdered at the Tartu Concentration Camp during the time that Linneas was Commandant there.

In January 1944  Linnas fought in the Estonian Collaborating Estonian Auxiliary Police (German: Estnische Hilfspolizei and Estonian: Eesti kaitsepataljonid) where he was wounded.

Linnas, his Parents and his Sister then fled west with the retreating Germans  - not wanting to live under Soviet Occupation again.

After the War in May 1945 Linnas lived in a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany until he immigrated to the United States in 1951 (under the American Displaced Persons Act of 1948.)

Linnas hid his Nazi Crimes from American Immigration and became a US Citizen in 1960.

He lived in Greenlawn on Long Island in New York where he worked as a Surveyor.

In October 1961 the Soviets sent an Extradition Request to the Americans for Linnas to be tried for his Nazi Crimes during the War.

The Americans (at the height of the Cold War and fearing the Soviet Communists) refused to extradite Linnas to the USSR.

In 1962 the Soviets sentenced Linnas to Death in Absentia for his role of the murder of Men, Women and Children at the Tartu Concentration Camp (the Soviets said he had murdered 12,000 People.)

In 1979, the United States Immigration and Customs Department accused him of providing false information when entering the Country back in 1951.

That was through the work of the newly created Office of Special Investigations (OSI), established in 1979 within the US Department of Justice which was given extraordinary power to investigate alleged War Criminals in the US.

In 1981, the Federal District Court for the City of Westbury stripped the 62-year-old Linnas of his U.S. Citizenship for hiding his Criminal Past from Immigration 30 years earlier and ordered Linnas to be deported to the Soviet Union (his Native Estonia had been Re-Occupied by the Soviets from 1945-1991.)

His Case was handled by Prosecutor, Rudolph Giuliani (who would later be the Mayor of New York City.)

His Lawyer was Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark.

In 1986, the US Federal Court of Appeals upheld the Deportation Order,

In April 1987, the US Supreme Court refused to hear the Linnas’ Appeal and he was Deported from the United States to the USSR in 1987.

He was flown from New York City  to Prague, Czechoslovakia and from there went to Tallinn, Soviet-Occupied Estonia and kept at the Central Prison.

In June 1987 his health deteriorated and he was sent to Leningrad (Present-Day; Saint Petersburg.)

He was operated on twice at the Hospital Prison there.

Linnas had Stomach, Liver and Heart Disease.

Because of his ill-health the Death Sentence imposed on him in 1962 was changed to Life Imprisonment.

On July 2, 1987 at the Prison Hospital in Leningrad, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Present-Day: Saint Petersburg, Russia) Karl Linnas died.

He was 67 years old.

His body was cremated and his Daughter, Anu, was allowed to bring the remains back to the United States on July 4, 1987.

His remains were scattered in an unknown location.

Karl Linnas became the Second War Criminal handed over by the American Authorities to the USSR (the first was Fyodor Fedorenko who was a Guard at the Treblinka Death Camp, fled to the US after the War, was deported from the US in 1984 and shot by the Soviets in July 1987.)

Estonia became independent of Soviet Occupation on August 20, 1991.

The Soviet Union collapsed on December 25, 1991.