Denying The Past

The Government of Canada has succeeded in its determination to revoke citizenship from yet another Nazi collaborator, who settled in Canada as an immigrant, post WWII, without divulging his past activities. Had the man initially released the information to immigration authorities that he was involved in criminal activities, he would never have been permitted to emigrate to Canada, would never have been granted citizenship.

Canada's Federal Court has upheld the government's right to revoke the citizenship of Helmut Oberlander, a former Nazi collaborator, characterizing his wartime activities as "the very epitome of brutal", in a delicate understatement of comprehension. Mr. Oberlander was, in fact, attached to a unit of Einsatzkommando, special police task forces whose task it was to operate "mobile killing units".

Their dedication to their task in efficiently obliterating undesirables from the world of the living resulted in excess of two million people dying undeserved, untimely and horrible deaths. They were,for the most part, civilians who were of Jewish origin, along with Communists, Roma, political dissenters, and the mentally and physically disabled.

Mr. Oberlander has his supporters. He has lived quietly and as a superlative citizen in a small Ontario town for his 50 decades as a Canadian citizen, bringing no undue attention to his presence. His neighbours attest to his kindness, his very neighbourliness, an exemplary citizen. The German Canadian Congress has risen to his defence, that he was a young boy when the Germans entered his town in Ukraine.

They sought his help because of his language dexterity, speaking German, Russian and Ukrainian. He became that deadly unit's interpreter. Somewhat like, explained the national president of the German Canadian Congress, what currently obtains in Afghanistan with Canadian soldiers eliciting the assistance of indigenous interpreters.

Except that the presence of international and Canadian military in Afghanistan has the purpose of defending the indigenous population from the ravages of the Taliban. And interpreters working with Canadian military personnel do so willingly, knowing they can be murdered by the Taliban for their efforts on behalf of the foreign militia.

Mr. Oberlander, on the other hand, was a cog in the machinery of delivering organized death on a scale not seen in modern times.

He was fully cognizant, moving with and working alongside the Einsatzkommando that their vital work was comprised of exterminating living human beings. He was able to live with that inconvenient fact, made no attempt to remove himself from the scene of ongoing carnage, and sought afterward, like countless others, to leave that blemish on his character behind, to settle abroad and find a new life for himself.

Mr. Oberlander proved quite successful in building a new life for himself. His past took a very long time to catch up with him. In the interim, he was able to enjoy opportunities available to him in a different country that guaranteed those freedoms and opportunities. None of the millions of slaughtered in whose fate he had an oblique hand, had any such second chances.

Canada's government has every intention of making good on its obligation to make certain that the country is not a haven for those involved in massive dread atrocities against other human beings. Mr. Oberlander's revocation of citizenship now joins a list of others who, since 1977, have been similarly deprived of their comfortable anonymity.

It's unfortunate that he is elderly, and has established roots in Canada. It's time he was finally deported. Never too late to atone for unspeakable crimes.