Denying Justice

"He served the Nazi cause for three or four years [and] surrendered at the end of the war."
"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."
Federal Court judge, 2012

"Individuals will not be held liable for crimes committed by a group simply because they are associated with that group, or because they passively acquiesced to the group's criminal purpose."
Supreme Court of Canada, precedent/judgement, 2013

"The appellant was entitled to a determination of the extent to which he made a significant and knowing contribution to the crime or criminal purpose of the Ek10a."
"Only then could a reasonable determination be made as to whether whatever harm he faced was more serious than the harm inflicted on others through his complicity."
Justice Elanor Dawson, Federal Court of Appeal, 2015

"[Helmut] Oberlander was a member of a Nazi mobile killing unit that murdered more than 90,000 Jewish men, women and children during the Holocaust."
"He lied about his complicity in these atrocities and gained Canadian citizenship fraudulently. Based on these facts, he should be deported without further delay."
Shimon Koffler Fogel, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

An estimated six million Jews and millions more Poles, Russian soldiers, gypsies, homosexuals and other 'undesirables' lost their lives in the camps.

The activist, left-leaning Supreme Court of Canada in its wisdom has given new life to an old Nazi in refusing a government initiative to extradite Helmut Oberlander, the 92-year-old former SS officer, member of a death squad, who entered Canada under false pretenses. The sensitivity of the Supreme Court Justices to the human rights of this man would have been given short shrift at the Nuremberg Trials that took place shortly after the end of World War Two, even if they were held to be 'show' trials.

Held to show the world that there are consequences to be paid for unspeakable crimes against humanity. Where, when the accused appeared before those who were there to judge their actions and who refused to accept the 'nicht shuldig' responses of the people formerly in uniform doing the bidding of the Third Reich to exterminate Europe's Jews, on the basis of the contention they were merely following orders like good soldiers.

Nuremberg held them to personal accountability for the atrocities they had so obediently and sometimes with great enthusiasm engaged in.

The Supreme Court of Canada clearly places the comfort of human rights of an individual, even one who committed countless innocent people to their death, of more importance than to extradite a man who has been fighting the federal government's intent to deprive him of the comfort of life in Canada and send him back to Germany as a belated measure of justice for the crimes he was associated with.

Mr. Fogel, in stating that under Canadian immigration law this man should not be in possession of citizenship is absolutely correct. Applicants wishing to come to Canada as immigrants are not admissible if they have a criminal record, if they have been involved with criminal governments or militaries committing war crimes. Mr. Oberlander has the distinction of falling into all those inadmissible categories.

Moreover, citizenship is automatically revoked from anyone who lies on their application for citizenship, let alone admission to the country as a permanent resident. If anyone fails to divulge issues from their past that are germane to their legal status; criminal acts of any nature, they stand to be deported from Canada. Under all of these guidelines, Mr. Oberlander qualifies and he should have been summarily removed from Canada years ago, before he began exhausting the appeals process in the country.

Waterloo Regional Record / Peter Lee / CP    Helmut Oberlander (right) and his wife Margret (left) and daughter Irene Rooney (centre behind) leave the courthouse in Kitchener, Ontario on Tue., Nov. 4, 2003.