Canada's Negligent Absorption of War Criminals

"It is with deep regret that we acknowledge that Mr. Peter Savaryn was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1987, and we express our sincere apology to Canadians for any distress or pain his appointment may have caused."

"Mr. Hunka's past involvement with the Waffen-SS and his recognition in the House of Commons have been a source of great concern to the Governor General."

"The Chancellery is committed to working with Canadians to ensure our honours system is reflective of Canadian values."

"Historical appointments to the Order of Canada reflect a specific moment in time and would have been based on limited information sources available at that time."

Rideau Hall statement

The office of Governor General Mary Simon says it "deeply regrets" appointing Peter Savaryn to the Order of Canada in 1987. Mr Savaryn died in 2017, aged 90   Getty Images

"If subsequently, evidence comes to light of something as grievous as collaborating with a Nazi regime, that there should be some mechanism where it's made clear that this individual is rejected by the institution [a new process should be instituted to formally remove Savaryn's honour award]."

"It would be undoing a historical misstep by the Canadian government in covering that up [Canada's past history of a lax attitude toward permitting postwar Nazis and war criminals to enter Canada and achieve citizenship], because it would enable the Canadian public to recognize how deep this problem goes."

"This would provide much needed sunlight into a very dark period that a lot of people don't know about."

Dan Panneton, director of community engagement, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center

It's somewhat disingenuous at this point to declare that not enough was known about the background of a person who was permitted to immigrate to Canada despite being identified as a member of a Nazi SS unit, to explain away how it could be possible for such a man to flourish in Canada, build a new persona and future for himself and be recognized as a credit to the community, and by extension to human endeavours when such a man's past held the reality of voluntarily serving the Nazi regime, swearing an oath of allegiance to its Fuhrer, and pursuing the goal of genocide.

When former Nazis entered Canada as new immigrants they faced no scrutiny or roadblock to entry, in the decades following World War II. Jewish refugees who survived the Holocaust and arrived to Canada, were shocked to realize that their tormentors and murderers had gained entry to a country they themselves sought refuge in. Jewish social-cultural groups petitioned various governments over the years to hold these people accountable for their war crimes; at the very least to extradite them to Germany or the country of their origin.

Time after time these requests were ignored, until one prime minister consented to look into the matter, striking an enquiry and appointing an esteemed judge to oversee the resulting investigation. The two reports that came out of that enquiry have never been released to the public in their entirety. The Deschenes enquiry reached the conclusion that individuals should not be held responsible for what the battalions they were attached to engaged in, despite that the Nuremberg authorities deemed such SS divisions as being involved in war crimes. 

The 1986 Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, known as the Deschenes Commission, interviewed 774 individuals suspected of being war criminals. The interviews and the names of those involved were never released, but were held for the succeeding years as secret, classified documents. One part of the report was eventually released, but was heavily redacted. Jewish groups are now demanding that both Commission reports be released in their entirety.

Several weeks ago, a Canadian parliamentarian invited an elderly Canadian-Ukrainian citizen to the House of Commons on the occasion of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to Canada where he was scheduled to address Parliament. The 98-year-old guest was revealed days after he was feted in the House as a Ukrainian military 'hero' who had fought with Germany against the Soviet Union in a voluntary ethnic brigade attached to the Nazi SS -- whose focus was the elimination of Jews during the Holocaust years -- as a former voluntary enlistee in an ethnic SS division.

 

That embarrassment was compounded mere days later by Canada's Governor General Mary Simon apologizing to Canadians yet again on the discovery that a recipient of the prestigious Order of Canada went to yet another Canadian-Ukrainian who had fought in the very same SS-Galicia Battalion and had, like Yaroslav Hunka, sworn an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. 

 

It somehow escaped the notice of these Members of Parliament that there is no correlation between Russia's current invasion of Ukraine, and the Ukrainians that saw fit to align themselves with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union, fighting at that time with the Allies against the Fascist Axis coalition.

Over a week after Yaroslav Hunka was cheered in the House of Commons, Jewish groups are calling for Ottawa to release a decades-old report from the Deschênes Commission containing details about alleged Nazi war criminals living in Canada.  CBC

Once again, it was not that Rideau Hall -- and the office of the Governor General, similar to the lack of oversight by Canadian parliamentarians or the prime minister's office, or the House of Commons' security, to look into the background of someone invited to the House -- themselves undertook a simple background check of those they were championing. It was a Jewish news source, the venerable old Forward that brought the Nazi backgrounds of these two men to the tardy attention of Canadian authorities.

 

The International Community, which has a far better memory in Europe of the horrors of wars fought on their soil, has viewed these compelling errors of judgement and lack of memory on the part of the government of Canada with incredulous bemusement. Inexcusable lapses which saw an event as lunatic as introducing a former Nazi whose battalion was involved in the roundup and murder of Jews, to a Jewish president of a nation once again embattled by a territorial-hungry neighbour.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau arrives for a caucus meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Serbia, a Nation in Mourning

"I will continue to work and I will never back down before the street and the mob..."

"Whether it will be a reshuffle of the government or an election, we shall see." 

Serbia's President, Aleksandar Vucic   

 

"We are here because we can't wait any longer. We've waited too long, we've been silent too long, we've turned our heads too long."  

"We want safe schools, streets, villages and cities for all children." 

Marina Vidojevic, schoolteacher   

 

"Part of the shock is because no-one believed it could happen here."  

 "My son told me he doesn't feel safe in school or on the street anymore, and that he cannot fall asleep."

"We need to give them time and space to process it and heal - and the teachers too." 

Ana Djordjevic, graphic designer   

 

"You can feel the strange atmosphere - people are sitting with no music or laughter. If it wasn't for foreign customers, we would have very little business."

"I keep it [legally licensed Beretta pistol that his grandfather carried when he fought with the Partisans in World War Two] as a memento of my grandfather."

 "Perhaps it could be deactivated, so I could just have it as a souvenir. But many people in Serbia have illegal guns." 

Voja Cekic, bar and restaurant waiter, Belgrade's Old Town

 

"We have to learn anew how to speak to each other and how to create a healthy future ... to nurture the beauty of living, of art, science and humanity."  

"The worst among us have been in power for an entire decade, and they imposed the norms of aggression, intolerance, crime and lies."

Biljana Stojkovic, leader of leftist Zajedno (Together) party

People attend a protest in Belgrade, Serbia, on Monday. Tens of thousands of Serbians demanded better security, a ban on violent TV content and the resignation of key ministers days after two mass shootings killed 17 people. (Zorana Jevtic/Reuters)

Serbia is a nation in disbelief. this, after a gunman killed eight people, wounding another 14 in two Serbian villages. This, at a time when the population is still reeling over a mass shooting that took place a day earlier when a 13-year-old boy took his father's guns and opened fire at the school he attended in the heart of Belgrade, shooting at his peers and killing seven girls, one boy and a school guard.

Parents of 13-year-old Ema Kobiljski, centre, mourn during a funeral procession in Belgrade on Saturday. Kobiljski was killed in Wednesday's school shooting. (Armin Durgut/The Associated Press)

 

Serbia had a shameful role when conflict occurred against other former Yugoslavia ethnic groups. Despite that Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic is serving a life sentence for genocide in Bosnia, he has the reputation of a nationalist hero. There is a mural honouring him as such, located a few blocks from the school where the shooting occurred. A red heart was painted over the mural; efforts to remove it thwarted by masked thugs. 

 

Nationalist, right-wing sentiments have been rising in the country. As in Germany after World War II, post-conflict war criminals are seen to retain public roles post-sentencing. 

 

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic spoke of the shootings as an attack on the entire nation. The 20-year-old shooter wore a T-shirt with a pro-Nazi slogan. The two mass shootings, one following hard on the other, has sent the nation into shock, even a nation for which deadly conflict was so recent. The conflicts of the 1990s left Serbia flooded with weapons. 

 

Politicians and other public figures have attempted to explain the tragedies. But the public is not assuaged; it is grief-stricken and beset with anxiety over what violent tragedy may be next to occur, around the corner. The nation is left deeply divided, in an atmosphere where convicted war criminals are often glorified and violence committed against minority groups tends to go unpunished.

"This is a moment when a nation decides whether it will go along a healing path", commented Serbian actor Srdjan Timarov. With the country going through a period of mourning, television is full of people dressed in mourning black. Music has been banned from airwaves, not heard in cafes and restaurants. In Belgrade, the capital, residents lined up to donate blood, after a broadcasted appeal.

The 20-year-old attacker killed five people near Mladenovac. about 50 kilometres south of Belgrade, wounded six in one village, and then went on to kill three more people before wounding another eight. Following the shootings in Dubona, the attacker hijacked a taxi, forcing the drive to take him over 100 kilometres south to Vinjiste, where he was eventually arrested.

Police found a large cache of illegal weapons and ammunition, including hand grenades, an automatic rifle and handguns. in a search of a relative's home and at a cottage in yet another village. A photograph was released by authorities showing a young man in a police car wearing a T-shirt with the message "Generation 88". Double eights are used as shorthand for 'Heil Hitler" -- 'H' being the eighth letter of the alphabet.

People march during a protest against violence in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, May 8, 2023. The shootings last Wednesday in Belgrade and a day later in a rural area south of the capital left the nation stunned. The shootings also triggered calls to encourage tolerance and rid society of widespread hate speech and a gun culture stemming from the 1990s wars. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

"And That's Shameful" Einsatzkommando 10a

This photo taken from a the body of a dead German officer who was killed in Russia shows a German firing squad shooting Soviet-Jewish civilians in the back as they sit beside a mass grave in the Babi Yar ravine on the outskirts of Kiev.  AP

"Oberlander found comfort and freedom in Canada. His victims were denied the right of life, of family of happiness, of children and grandchildren -- all of which Oberlander celebrated in abundance."

"It is a sad day not because he died, but because Canada has been exposed in terms of allowing men and women like Oberlander to come to this country, live here in peace and never face justice. And that's shameful."

"He very successfully played a very poor Canadian immigration system -- and won."

"Every government, it doesn't matter if it was Conservative government or Liberal government throughout the postwar period, has blame on this file, as does the very poor Canadian justice system."

Bernie Farber, CEO, Canadian Anti-Hate Network

"The peaceful demise of Helmut Oberlander on Canadian soil is a stain on our national conscience. The fact is that this country slammed its doors on Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis, then allowed some of their tormentors into Canada and failed to deport them."

Michael Mostyn, CEO, B'nai Brith Canada

"The delays in these cases were unconscionable. The result was justice for victims of the crime addressed in these cases was denied."

David Matas, senior legal counsel, B'nai Brith Canada

 

"Canada's war record on first admitting Nazi war criminals and then failing to properly investigate and then deport them is a national shame."

"While victims of the Holocaust were brutally murdered, Nazi war criminals mostly died peacefully in this country."

"Many have literally gotten away with murder."

Avi Abraham Benlolo, chairman, Abraham Global Peace Initiative, Toronto

After the mass murder of 33,771 Jews at Babyn Yar, Ukraine, September 1941 (public domain)

 

Helmut Oberlander, a resident of Canada since he and his wife applied for immigration in 1952, held permanent residence status from 1954 forward, becoming a citizen of Canada in 1960. On his immigration application he failed to disclose his status as a former German soldier in World War II, knowing that this would invalidate his application. Legally, he had no right to Canadian citizenship. A false declaration on an immigration application, evidence of participation in war crimes would make him inadmissible.

He was an ethnic German living in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, when it was invaded by Nazi forces. He was conscripted and assigned work as a translator for Einsatzkommando 10a (Ik10a), a special police task force operating in occupied territory. His claim to innocence rests in his arguing that he was a teen at the time of his conscription, and that he never personally took part in the killings conducted by the death squad he was associated with. Merely an innocent observer. 

There is the philosophical observation that an observer is a participant merely by being at the scene of an atrocity. And that observing while working as an enabler as a translator, the claim of innocence is in and of itself an utter absurdity. He was actively engaged with the killing squads whose purpose was to act as roving killers in uniform armed with deadly weapons seeking out vulnerable victims whom local populations were less than loathe to identify and on occasion more than willing to help in their eradication. They too were/are guilty of crimes against humanity.

When I was a child I recall the horrors of whispered agonies of my parents and their friends over the unspeakable atrocities taking place in Nazi Germany. There were underground pamphlets passed around detailing news of massacres and cattle cars and transports, and work camps and concentration camps and death camps ... the scale of which would be revealed to the world at large in good order. I remember my parents speaking in hushed, disbelieving voices with their friends, post Holocaust of someone they know walking along Bloor Street in Toronto and suddenly confronting a guard from Auschwitz.

Photo Courtesy B'nai Brith Canada

"Helmut Oberlander has passed away peacefully. In the end, he was surrounded by loved ones in his home."

"Notwithstanding the challenges in his life, he remained strong in his faith. He took comfort in his family and the support of many in his community. He gave generously to charity, supported his church and was a loving family man. He will be dearly missed."

Oberlander family statement

 

My parents came to Canada in the pre-war years. My father, an orphan living on the streets of Warsaw was sent to Canada by a philanthropic Polish society of Jews, to work as an indentured farmhand until such time as his passage was paid off and he was free to become a free man, albeit younger then than Oberlander. My mother and her sister came as young girls after their parents were murdered in the Pale of Settlement by a mob of White Russians. They worked in garment factories to repay distant relatives in the U.S. who had paid for their passage to Canada. 

During the war years entrance to Jews facing annihilation in Europe was closed off. Canada had all the Jews it would tolerate. They would have to find haven elsewhere. Japan, though part of the Axis, helped some Jews escape Europe into China. Canada turned away desperate Jewish refugees sailing on the German passenger vessel,  the St.Louis looking for haven abroad. It was not to be.

 

It was, in fact, former Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney who was convinced by Jewish human-rights lobbyists that Canada had a moral and human-right responsibility to identify and either prosecute or surrender German Nazi war criminals settled as good citizens in Canada, back to Germany to stand trial there for their participation in war crimes where they could inform a court 'nicht schuldig". Being part of a "mobile killing unit" is a criminal offence and a war crime.

Helmut Oberlander, a retired businessman of 97, is dead in Waterloo, Ontario. It was 35 years ago that a commission set  up to find and prosecute Canadians born in Germany, who had Nazi affiliation in the Third Reich, that Helmut Oberlander became its first target. During those 35 years he used every legal opportunity available to him to defend himself in court, to counter charges, to appeal to higher authorities to overturn judgements not in his favour. Anything to avoid deportation.

Oberlander's citizenship was revoked in 2001 in 2007 in 2012. The final time, in 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada would not hear his appeal of the last revocation of his citizenship, accepting the reality that because of fraudulently entering the country, citizenship was invalid. Which would enable his deportation. But there were always more avenues of appeal. The final judgement was in the works, with the Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator prepared to rule on his motion of dismissal. No need now.

 

Nicht Schuldig, Of Course

"Each time the media issues a story about my grandfather, we receive unsolicited and often threatening messages by email and on social media platforms."

"The messages describe various means of killing one or all of my family members, including forcing my family members to drink Clorox; gassing my family members; hanging my family members; decapitating my family members; shooting my family members; and killing my family members by other means."

Jamie Rooney, grandson, Helmut Oberlander, former member of German killing squad, Holocaust 

Helmut Oberlander has said previously he was forcibly conscripted by the Nazis when he was 17 years old. On Wednesday, his lawyer sought to have his deportation hearing adjourned. (CIJA)

 

How horrible, what a misery to visit on people innocent of any crime other than being offshoots of a man who during World War II, as a German citizen conscripted into the Nazi military machine, he effectively collaborated with, and facilitated the murder of numberless men, women and children of all ages and conditions who were gassed, hanged, shot, en masse -- all with the intention of exterminating the entirety of Europe's Jewish population, every last one. And coming close to succeeding.

In the 70-plus years since the end of that war from 1939 to 1945, fascist Germany and its Axis allies succeeded in destroying the lives of at least six million Jews and along with them, homosexuals, political dissenters, Roma, and the physically and mentally impaired. Jews were rounded up from villages in the European countryside, and sometimes a mass atrocity of forcing them to dig a trench to stand by it and be shot and thrown into that mass grave proceeded.

In the cities of Europe, often with the assistance of local police and local fascists and local Jew-haters Jews were assembled, placed on cattle cars without food or water or sanitation for transit to work camps, concentration camps, death camps. Experiments with gases on the crowded cattle cars were carried out to kill people while in transit. At arrival at the camps the dead on the cattle cars were shoved aside and the living instructed to go to the left or the right; instantly to the gas chambers, alternately to work in German factories producing war supplies.

 

A group of Jews, including a small boy, is escorted from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers in this April 19, 1943 photo. The picture formed part of a report from SS Gen. Stroop to his Commanding Officer, and was introduced as evidence to the War Crimes trials in Nuremberg in 1945  AP Photo

 

Helmut Oberlander disguised his past when he emigrated from Europe to Canada in 1954. Falsifying his application would be grounds for revoking his citizenship and deporting him back to Germany; war criminals are not permitted entry to Canada -- in theory. In his case his citizenship was revoked four times and the wheels began turning to have him deported back to his country of origin. It has been 35 years that the process has swung back and forth. 

He is now 97 years of age as a retired businessman living in Waterloo, Ontario. His neighbours would have known him as a quiet, nice man. Each time government agencies acted to revoke his citizenship, appeals leading to court judgements reinstated him. The fourth time, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his appeal and he was finally slated for expulsion and deportation. Canada did as much with Rwandans who were part of the Hutu apparatus of government that slaughtered Rwandan Tutsis.

Canada's record in holding responsible and deporting Nazi war criminals involved in the wholesale slaughter of millions of Jews does it no credit. His fraudulent entry to Canada has failed repeatedly to expel him, as the law on Canadian immigration justice reflects.This now aged and ailing war criminal has evaded deportation through permitted appeals time and again. Although he was among the first targeted by a war crimes unit, criminal prosecution proved too difficult, deportation the only avenue.

But even that, in an effort to hold a war criminal responsible for his actions and ridding the country of his presence along with others of his ilk, has failed. Courts overturned his citizenship revocation and intention to deport him in 2001, 2007 and 2012. But even when those orders were finally upheld, more appeals stalled the process indefinitely, to the present. Helmut Oberlander's grandson's tale of woe is one of those instances when "Cry me a river" seems appropriate.

 

The arrival and processing of an entire transport of Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, a region annexed in 1939 to Hungary from Czechoslovakia, at Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland, in May of 1944. The picture was donated to Yad Vashem in 1980 by Lili Jacob

 

But his lawyers and his family fight on to achieve their goal of having him remain in Canada until his imminent death through natural causes. His reward for loyalty to German fascism in aiding and abetting the deaths of countless people innocent of any crime but the circumstances of their birth as Jews, has been to reap the benefits of living in a country that afforded him a gracious future and the opportunity to raise a family -- opportunities he willingly deprived Jews of, who were innocent of doing grave harm to others.

He had been assigned, still in his teen years as a translator for Einsatzkommando 10a, known as Ek10a, a special police task force operating in occupied territory; 'mobile killing units' connected to the Nazi SS to achieve their goal of mass murder. At his advanced age, mental faculties and physical condition are not at their prime understandably; his constant appeals of the Canadian government's attempts to hold him accountable and rid the country of his presence bought him precious time.

It speaks volumes that an hour-long assessment at his home by a doctor produced this report on his behalf, in support of his family's wishes:

"He was seen today in his family room. He sits on a Lazy Boy chair with his feet on an ottoman. He is next to the sliding doors to a back deck, with a view of the backyard."

"He answered at times tangentially, and at other times his answer was irrelevant and slurred. According to his family this was one of his better days."

"At one point, he interrupted our conversation asking what was out hanging and drying in the backyard -- there was nothing. When asked to clarify, he lost track of his train of thought."

"He hallucinates, seeing squirrels or people with suitcases. We observed him picking at invisible things in the air with his hands. He is generally quite drowsy. Sleep is poor. [His physical functions are in decline]."

"A referral to palliative care services was recommended and accepted."

He will shortly rest at peace, surrounded by his loving family members who will sorrow at his passing. Jewish loss of life has long since been discounted as part of history. Jews, haunted by the colossal tragedy of the Holocaust are often challenged by skeptics that it ever even occurred. Anti-Semites accuse Jews of profiting from the Holocaust by using it as a cudgel with which to demand special attention from a world whose disinterested inaction failed humanity. 

Generations after the Holocaust, the world total of the population of Jews still struggles to achieve the total number that existed pre-Holocaust. Jews remain haunted by the very reality that no one cared that because they are Jews they were 'destined' to die. That people in targeted occupied countries accepted that Jews were dispensable. While taking comfort in the fact that far smaller but far more significant numbers of non-Jews saw it in their courageous hearts to shelter and save a small number of Jews from death.

This photo provided by Paris' Holocaust Memorial shows a German soldier shooting a Ukrainian Jew during a mass execution in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, sometime between 1941 and 1943. This image is titled "The last Jew in Vinnitsa", the text that was written on the back of the photograph, which was found in a photo album belonging to a German soldier.

s