Justice Overdue

"There was no evidence that he was mistreated and no evidence that he sought to be relieved of his duties. He served the Nazi cause for three or four years."
"[He also] has never expressed any remorse for being a member of EK 10a or indicated that he found the activities of the organization abhorrent. There is no evidence that what he did for the organization was inconsistent with his will."
"He gave no convincing evidence that he ever gave any real consideration to ways in which he might extricate or distance himself from the brutal purpose of the organization to which he contributed."
Justice James Russell, Federal Court of Canada

Pin by Mark Edgar-Evans on Germany- War 2 (Part three) | Pinterest

Helmut Oberlander was a member of a notorious Nazi death squad that executed 91,678 people in southern Russia..

"We will revoke citizenship from individuals who obtain it fraudulently to ensure that Canada is not a safe haven for fraudsters and criminals."
Kevin Menard, spokesman, Citizenship and Immigration

"The five EK units of Einsatzgruppen D, to which EK 10a belonged, executed 55,000 civilians between June, 1941, and mid-December, 1941, and another 46,000 by April, 1942, and many more thereafter."
"By August, 1942, EK 10a had executed so many thousands of Jews that its operational area was declared Judenrein (Jew-free)."
2008 ruling by Canadian judge

People who are neighbours and those who become friends of people being brought to justice for hideous crimes against humanity always profess surprise that the nice man who has been a good neighbour for years, has been arrested and charged with such heinous crimes. The crimes never fit the image they have adopted of the person they have become familiar with. All the more so when that person is elderly.

Helmut Oberlander was employed at a Nazi death camp where Jews were systematically murdered. Born in Ukraine of German heritage, he was conscripted to work as an interpreter for the Nazis. For his exemplary work he received a German war medal in recognition of his fine upstanding work ethic. Eventually he migrated to Canada. Nowhere on his application did he indicate that he had been a Nazi, that he had been employed at a death camp.

Had he done so, as is required by Canadian law, his application would have been refused.

He became a Canadian citizen in 1960, living in southwestern Ontario. It took awhile, but with the revelation of his background due to the work of the Simon Weisenthal Center in alerting countries like Canada to the presence of war criminals among their citizenry, the government decided in 1995 to revoke the man's citizenship basing the grounds to do so on the fact that he had failed to disclose his wartime past.

This is a case that has been in and out of courts for years, as the man whom the government of Canada decided decades ago to remove from Canada as a war criminal, has taken all steps available to him under Canadian law to forestall efforts to rescind his citizenship and remove him from the country. Once again, Mr. Oberlander, now 90 years of age, insisted he had been informed that if he tried to escape from his duties he would be shot.

Justice Russell declared that Mr. Oberlander hadn't given any proof his life would have been at risk had he disobeyed or deserted the Nazis. While he was a creature of the Third Reich in his capacity of aiding the process of murder, he is held to have been complicit in those acts of genocide. Millions of Jews died by various means of execution during the Second World War. Those, like Mr. Oberlander, who aided and abetted the slaughter, lived long lives.

For any who might have compassion for a 90-year-old man, there are many others who are disgusted that justice has allowed him to evade the punishment due him through extradition from a country which views his criminal past as a dreadful blot on its citizenship rolls. A situation that should have been resolved and carried out many years ago, long before he reached the venerable age of 90.