A Haven In Canada

In what was then eastern Poland and is now Belarus on March 22, 1943 the village of Khatyn experienced a catastrophe when villagers were set to be burned alive as they were gathered together for that very purpose, in a barn.  This area was under German control, and local police did not hesitate to fit right into the Nazi extermination machine.  One of those was a man by the name of Vladimir Katriuk. 

Recently released archival materials gathered by the Soviets were examined and the information they revealed was included in a recently published academic paper based in part on those declassified Soviet documents.  The paper appears in the latest edition of Holocaust and Genocide Studies.  Its contents led Jewish organizations to approach the Government of Canada for the purpose of reopening an examination into the presence in Canada of Vladimir Katriuk.

This man arrived in Canada in 1951, without declaring his background, and has lived in Canada ever since.  Historian Per Anders Rudling, a postdoctoral fellow at Lund University, Sweden, is the author of the paper which, based on the Soviet testimony in those documents released in 2008, identifies Mr. Katriuk as a Nazi collaborator, and a mass murderer.

He is charged with having opened fire on civilians as people were herded into the barn to be immolated.  The paper relates that Mr. Katriuk "reportedly lay behind the stationary machine gun, firing rounds at anyone attempting to escape the flames".  And while the author mentions that Soviet archival material should be "carefully and critically" viewed, he also said additional sources point to Mr. Katriuk's massacre involvement, where the entire inhabitants of the village were annihilated.

Traditional Jewish life continued in Pinsk (Western Belarus) until WWII. (1924 photo)

 

After the German/USSR pact of WWII was abrogated and Russia, which had taken Belarus from Poland, withdrew, the area fell under German occupation in 1941.  A racist regime was imposed with hundreds of thousands deported for slave labour, and additional hundreds of thousands of civilians being killed.  Local police took part in many of these human-rights-abusing crimes.  And almost the entire Jewish populations of Belarus were wiped out.

"Katriuk's participation in the Khatyn massacre is confirmed by multiple testimonies, and in some detail", explained Mr. Rudling who has joint U.S./Swedish citizenship, and who took his PhD at the University of Alberta.  "The testimonies are consistent in identifying Katriuk as a machine gunner at Khatyn, and indeed in other atrocities.  Together, the material produces a compelling evidence that Katriuk was indeed an active participant in the massacre."

When approached with these revelations Mr. Katriuk responded that he was unaware of the paper and its findings.  In 1999, the Federal Court of Canada had ruled that Mr. Katriuk had deliberately concealed his past as a Nazi collaborator when he entered Canada, fully aware that this was the only way he could be permitted entry.  There was no evidence otherwise available at that time that he had been involved in atrocities.

Jewish groups like B'nai Brith Canada and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre have now approached Ottawa requesting the federal Cabinet to mount a review of its 2007 decision not to revoke Mr. Katriuk's citizenship.  "These records clearly document that Vladimir Katriuk was a commander of a platoon in the battalion which perpetrated the massacre and that he personally opened fire with a machine gun on defenceless villagers. There is no justification for continuing to give him a haven in Canada."

Mr. Katriuk had testified at a much earlier date that he hadn't voluntarily joined under the command of German officers, despite that he was in charge of a unit identified as Battalion 118 which was under Nazi command.  He insisted he had protected villagers and livestock from partisans, while not participating in German operations.  The partisans, lest we overlook that fact, were locals engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Nazi occupation.

He became part of the Waffen-SS before finally defecting and fighting against the Germans.  Under an assumed name he shipped out to Quebec in 1951, where he later assumed his legitimate name and was granted citizenship in 1958.  He was under scrutiny, however, and the government took him to court in 1995 through a war crimes investigation, arguing that he had intentionally concealed his involvement with the Nazi regime.

A lot of time has passed.  Those who are dead can never be revived, but they must be remembered.  Mr. Katriuk is a very old man.  He is 90 years of age, living in Montreal. 

"Yes, they are old and feeble, but we ought not think of them as they are today but remember them as they were when carrying out their horrendous work - young, strong brutish thugs.  They lived to a ripe old age while denying their victims their right to life."  Bernie Farber, former CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress

Justice, however late, can, should and must be done.