Late Justice Never To Happen?

"I think that the Canadian government has dropped the ball on this. We [Simon Wiesenthal Centre] saw ministers and spoke to ministers quite directly about this in 2012. We provided them with a report. We brought in Holocaust survivors. And it was very difficult for the survivors to come and speak to them about it [their deathly experiences during World War II]."
Avi Benlolo, president, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre

"Investigations into Second World War allegations will continue as long as viable routes of investigation remain open."
Justice Minister Peter MacKay statement

 

Vladimir Katriuk was born in Ukraine, but now lives in Canada as a Canadian citizen. He has been living in Canada since 1951, in actual fact. When he and his wife fled Ukraine and made application to emigrate to Canada they both used false names on their application to ensure that there would be no background check revealing his wartime experiences. He is a man accused of helping to massacre a village in Belarus, serving with the Nazis, in 1943.

That alone, under Canadian immigration laws; filing false information on immigration forms is most certainly grounds for rescinding citizenship and extraditing anyone who has been found to have lied on those critical forms enabling entry to Canada. Yet a Federal Court judge, on appeal -- and under these circumstances, people have access to the Canadian justice system that allows for myriad appeals extending such situations indefinitely -- set aside a move to strip Mr. Katriuk of citizenship.

The judgement in 1999 was that although Canadian citizenship was obtained under fraudulent conditions, the government claimed to have insufficient evidence to prove he had committed war crimes. And the decision to revoke his citizenship in 2007 was set aside. Which is puzzling, since even without adequate proof of his criminal war record at the time, achieving entry to Canada through fraudulent means should have been enough to revoke citizenship.

Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a human rights group focusing on tracking down Nazi war criminals had, in 2012 presented new information unequivocally implicating Mr. Katriuk in the infamous Khatyn massacre. The Holocaust survivors who had testified against him at that time were informed by the two cabinet ministers who heard them out, Jason Kenney and Rob Nicholson, that the Katriuk case would be revisited.That revisitation has been inexplicably sclerotic.

"One witness stated that Volodymyr Katriuk was a particularly active participant in the atrocity: he reportedly lay behind the stationary machine gun, firing rounds on anyone attempting to escape the flames.”^[1][2] Another Soviet war crimes trial in 1973 heard that Katriuk and two others killed a group of Belarusian loggers earlier on that day, suspecting they were part of a popular uprising. "I saw how Ivankiv was firing with a machine-gun upon the people who were running for cover in the forest, and how Katriuk and Meleshko were shooting the people lying on the road," the witness said.^[3] Katriuk was a member of Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118 that helped the Nazis to create "dead zones."^[3] The dead zone policy involved exterminating Soviet partisans who had launched ambushes against Nazi forces."
Pers Anders Rudling, historian, Lund University

Which explains, reading the above from Wikipedia, why it is that the Russian embassy wrote: "It's 2015 and Vladimir #Katriuk still hasn't been brought to justice", on Twitter, along with a 2012 photograph of the man in uniform. Ottawa and Moscow haven't exactly been on the best of terms given events of the last year, with Russian President Vladimir Putin overseeing the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine to Russia.

Russia has brought the matter into the political sphere, with the embassy tweeting a photograph of Canada's trade minister and other Members of Parliament meeting with Ukrainian-Canadians, highlighting a portrait of Ukrainian Stepan Bandera in the background; a man whom Ukrainians revere, and whom Russians consider a Nazi collaborator. The implication being, of course, that the Conservative government is courting votes.

The official line in Moscow is that Ukrainian partisans leading the government against Russian hegemony in their country are mostly Nazis in drag; even while there are indeed right-wing extremists in Kyiv, whereas Canada has officially equated Russia's behaviour in Ukraine as fascist, comparing Russia's annexation of Crimea to Hitler's actions leading up to the Second World War in dismantling Czechoslovakia.

Vladimir Katriuk, still a Canadian citizen, is now 93 years of age, a bee-keeper living near Montreal. The evidence against him clearly points to his having been a Nazi war criminal. One among many who migrated to Canada under false pretences since the 1950s. And when Jewish organizations have informed the Canadian government of their presence along with their backgrounds over the years since then, little has ever been done to remove them from Canada.

Their active participation in Nazi atrocities aside, they have been permitted to live peaceful lives in Canada, far from the scenes of their crimes. Their victims met early deaths; men, women and children for whom there was no compassion, no countries that would attempt to rescue them when the opportunities presented themselves. And the memory of their deaths has not been honoured with justice done on their behalf.