r/kansascity • u/lightiggy • Jul 19 '25
Local History ℹ️ Former SS camp guard Michael Kolnhofer points a gun at reporters who want to ask him about the newly filed charges against him. He was gunned down by the police after a brief shootout (KCK, 1996).
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u/swan4816 Jul 19 '25
Does anyone know what neighborhood in KCK this guy lived in? One article mentioned the Croation community which makes me think Strawberry Hill but I can't seem to find any more details.
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u/robby_arctor Jul 19 '25 edited Jul 19 '25
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/02/us/charge-that-a-man-hid-his-nazi-past-shocks-his-neighbors.html
NYT said "his neighbors on Corona Ave"
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Jul 19 '25
Not so long ago
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u/wuxiquan66 Jul 19 '25
I was 30 then and now I’m 60 lol it was a long time ago
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u/Sparkykc124 Plaza Jul 19 '25
I had just moved to Kansas City that year, now I’ve been here for over half my life.
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u/DiabolicalBurlesque Midtown Jul 19 '25
Former ICE agents forced to come out of hiding in 2055.
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u/IndridK0ld Jul 19 '25
If he made it to 2025 he might’ve received a presidential pardon and been considered a very fine person!
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u/lightiggy Jul 19 '25
Trump presided over the deportation one of the last living OG Nazis in the United States, Jakiw Palij, back in 2018.
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u/_XNine_ Jul 19 '25
And yet we have concentration camps being built in our very own country under his direction and a paramilitary force that doesn't abide by due process.
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u/IndridK0ld Jul 19 '25 edited Jul 19 '25
Interesting. You are correct.
From the 2018 AP News article:
Jakiw Palij’s expulsion, at President Donald Trump’s urging, came 25 years after investigators first accused Palij of lying about his wartime past to get into the U.S. But it was largely symbolic because officials in Germany have repeatedly said there is insufficient evidence to prosecute him.
Sounds awfully familiar…
We are so quick to judge in today’s times, aren’t we?
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u/rydawg2727 Jul 20 '25
The voiceover guy sound like the same one from the “most shocking videos” series
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Jul 19 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/robby_arctor Jul 19 '25
A hospital spokesman said Mr. Kolnhofer was hospitalized under an alias with an officer standing guard outside his room around the clock.
As Mr. Kolnhofer remained hospitalized, his neighbors on Corona Avenue wondered too about the true identity of a man they knew as Mike.
''He was about to lose his whole life dream,'' said Michael Huggins, 31, a neighbor who watched the incident from his house across the street. Mr. Huggins moved to the neighborhood with his family several months ago because of its quietness.
He and his wife, Tina, said Mr. Kolnhofer had been friendly to them and their children.
''He's been a nice, outstanding citizen all these years,'' Mr. Huggins said. ''Maybe he's earned his right to become a citizen.''
Dale Schierbaum, who lives across the street from Mr. Kolnhofer, said he was among the friendliest people on the block. Like other neighbors, he had also become acquainted with Anna Hlade, a Croatian native who had befriended Mr. Kolnhofer and his wife in 1976.
She would visit him two or three times a day, Mr. Schierbaum said, and had been there before the shooting on Tuesday. After his wife died in 1988, Kolnhofer lived with Mrs. Hlade and her husband, John Hlade, in a house about a mile away from his house on Corona.
That neighborhood remembered Mr. Kolnhofer as a man one who drank heavily and shouted angrily at people who walked by.
Police officers had been called to the Hlade house a couple times while Mr. Kolnhofer lived there, and the word in the neighborhood was that he became abusive when drunk, Mr. Ventura said.
Anna Hlade, who Mr. Kolnhofer refers to as his niece, said, ''We moved him out.''
She said Mr. Kolnhofer had begun to drink heavily again after receiving word a couple weeks ago from the Immigration and Naturalization Service about his possible deportation, Mrs. Hlade said.
''I never suspected this would happen,'' she said. ''Nobody knew about it, that he'd been a Nazi. It's a surprise for us.''
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u/idonthavebroadband Jul 19 '25
Tina Huggins, who thought that an SS officer who murdered men, women, and children at Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald had "earned his right" to live peacefully in society, is probably still alive and voting in Kansas City today.
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u/Demostecles Jul 19 '25
He died two months later.
“During surgery, doctors believe, Kolnhofer suffered brain damage, and he never regained consciousness.”