Dr Stephen Ankier, a renowned Nazi hunter, is urging Scottish police to launch an investigation to identify any war criminals among the former SS men and bring them to justice.

His call comes in the wake of newly released government documents which reveal that 1,500 members of the unit — responsible for horrific war crimes in Ukraine and Poland — were brought to Scotland in 1947 and imprisoned in camps at Dalkeith, Midlothian, and Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire.

The following year they were released and allowed to resettle locally with their families.

The government papers, released under the Freedom of Information Act following pressure from Nazi hunters, show that the Home Office was deeply unhappy that the soldiers were allowed to enter Britain. However, the Foreign Office argued that the men, who had fought against Stalin, would be persecuted if they were returned to communist-ruled Urkraine.

Local people were told that the former SS men were refugees, brought over to plug the post-war labour shortage, But some are believed to have been recruited as spies by MI6 for use in anti-Soviet operations.

The Ukrainian Galizien division of the 14th SS division was formed as part of a programme of creating foreign formations of the Waffen SS to fight on the Soviet front. The division committed atrocities and took part in the final liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943.

Survivors of the massacres also claimed that the division murdered 800 civilians in the Polish village of Huta Pienacka, pouring petrol on inhabitants and burning them alive.

It is also claimed that three years earlier, members of the Nightingale battalion, a Ukranian police unit that merged with the Galizien division, descended on the town of Lvov and massacred thousands of Jews, including children whose bodies were left fastened to trees with barbed wire.

Ankier, whose Jewish parents fled from Poland to Britain in 1936, said: “Of the 1,500 Urkrainians who were brought over to Scotland, some may have now died, many moved on to Canada and some to other countries. I would say there would probably be between 50 and 100 left in Scotland.

“The authorities in Scotland ought to be trying their best to trace these individuals and if there is evidence that they committed war crimes then they should be brought to court.

“Many of these people would now be in their seventies and early eighties, are still fit and healthy, and there is no reason why they should not be prosecuted.”

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wisenthal centre in Jerusalem, said: “It is true that this unit participated in various atrocities. The whole notion of bringing them to Britain was extremely strange and it raises a lot of questions about the people who made that decision.

“The British government is currently investigating this unit and the Scottish authorities should certainly conduct their own investigation.”

Lubomyr Mazur, president of the Association of the Ukrainians of Great Britain, said there was no evidence that any of the former soldiers who had moved to Britain had been involved in war crimes.

“However, all Ukrainians would want anyone who was guilty of that kind of offence to be brought to justice,” he said.

Scotland Yard said the Metropolitan police Crimes Against Humanity unit had been passed a list of people suspected of having been involved in war crimes and an investigation was continuing.

The Crown Office said: “If allegations were received that an individual had been involved in such criminal activity, it would consider such allegations carefully and, if necessary, make further inquiries.”

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