No Haven In Canada

"He was a police chief in Lithuania and his unit, under supervision of Germans, rounded up five thousand Jews. They were locked up for a week, the women raped, their belongings looted. Then they lined them up naked in the ditch ... It took them six days to kill them all by gunfire. This guy was telling me all this matter-of-factly. He told me: 'Then on November 19, no more Jews'."
"It is to the Canadian government's great and eternal shame that more was not done [to initiate deportation proceedings against the man in question, Antanas Kenstavicius]."
"Entire units came en masse into Canada through Halifax in the 1940s. Canada knew at that time who they were."
"If there are a few cases that can still be brought, just for the sake of doing the right thing, then that should happen."
"None will live long enough to make it to trial, they will hire excellent lawyers. ...They'll delay and throw legal roadblocks in the way until they have died safely in their beds, but it's the point of doing it."
Steve Rambam, U.S. citizen, "Nazi hunter"

"Rambam" aka Moses Maimonides, 12th Century Jewish philosopher/physician, Rabbi Mosheh ben Maimon (Hebrew: רבי משה בן מימון‎), whose acronym forms "Rambam"

"Doing it" would mean committing to revisiting World War Two and the Holocaust, the deliberate, planned and exquisitely detailed annihilation of Europe's Jews. Mr. Ramban had interviewed Antanas Kenstavicius in Hope, British Columbia, posing as a university researcher. Mr. KIenstavicius obviously felt he had nothing to hide, there would be no consequences, there never had been any. As an elderly man living in Canada, he had long since left the past behind.

And he was helped immeasurably in doing that. After the end of that dreadful war the Allied powers felt that prosecuting war criminals should come to an end. There were in actual fact, so many Europeans, let alone Germans themselves holding high places of authority, along with those who were functionaries who held few scruples about lending themselves to the Final Solution, how could them all be held responsible for "following orders".

After all, the leading comment of self-exoneration at Nurenmberg was "nicht schuldig", because they were all ... following orders.

Mr. Ramban had taken it upon himself to interview some 72 of a list of one thousand suspected Nazis who were living in Canada. He had sent the results of his interviews on to Canadian authorities. Disappointingly, he recalls, nothing was done. The British Commonwealth Relations Office had written to the dominions relating the new policy, after the war's end. "In our view, the punishment of war criminals is more a matter of discouraging future generations, than of meting out retribution to every guilty individual."

It was "now necessary to dispose of the past as soon as possible", the dominions were informed. Jews who had fled Europe's charnel house as refugees, "greenies", who were permitted entry to Canada spoke in hushed, shocked voices to one another about having come across familiar faces while out walking on the streets of Toronto, recognizing visages they would never forget; former brutal prison guards complicit in the deaths of camp inmates. And, what to do?

Nothing, according to the British Commonwealth Relations Office.

That former Nazis lived comfortably in Canada, never held to account for their crimes rankled the Jewish community in Canada. Finally, pressure from the Jewish community led Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to set up a Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, in 1985, headed by Justice Jules Deschenes. The Deschenes Commission compiled the names of 883 suspects. And from then forward, from 1987 to 1992, 26 cases were filed, charges laid under the Criminal Code in four cases.

Imre Finta was the first suspect to be accused under new laws on war crimes in 1987. He had arrived in Canada in 1948. And he died here in 2003. He was accused of being a part of the fascist hierarchy rounding up Jews in Hungary in 1994, sending them off to Auschwitz and Strasshoff death camps for final disposition. And he was acquitted in 1990, and with that hopes of winning criminal proceedings against Nazi war criminals such as he evaporated.

The Supreme Court of Canada permitted the defence of obedience to orders under "an air of compulsion and threat". Compassionate exculpation for the mass murderers, none is too many for the memory of the slaughtered Jewish men, women and children. And two appeal courts agreed with the Supreme Court. In 2005 Parliament passed legislation to overturn that reasoning; too little, too late.

The failure of criminal prosecutions behind them, the government announced in 1995 it would use administrative measures such as revoking citizenship and ordering deportation. Two men were extradited under this new course of action, and five were deported. A 90-year-old Kitchener, Ontario man named Helmut Oberlander represents the "final symbol" of Canada's failure to prosecute Nazi war criminals.

He belonged to a Nazi killing squad, Einsatzkommando 10a, operating in the Eastern occupied territories of Europe. Mr. Oberlander has admitted he served with the "German armed forces", but never had he committed himself to the fascist ideology, nor had he ever participated in any killings. A judge finally ruled in 2000 that Mr. Oberlander worked, lived, and travelled as an interpreter for a Nazi mobile death squad. No evidence was found he participated in atrocities, but he would have been aware of them.

He was stripped of his citizenship for a second time in 2008, but the Federal Court of Appeal ordered the federal cabinet to reconsider based on Mr. Oberlander's claim that he joined the squad as an interpreter  under duress. Mr. Oberlander, a Ukrainian Canadian, was once again stripped of his citizenship in 2012 and mounted a counter challenge The Federal Court heard the appeal this year but has yet to release a decision.

"The government did look at this matter with laser focus, so I think we have to give them credit ... they tried. It was the justice system itself that in the end let us down", stated Bernie Farber, former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

"The Deschenes commission put forward the names of 883 suspects. To this day, federal authorities have investigated upward of 2,000 files. The government continues to receive allegations, all of which are examined", stated Paloma Aguilar, spokeswoman for the Department of Justice.

Explaining also that individuals who have been involved in war crimes or crimes against humanity would find no haven in Canada.

Oh.