Nicht Schuldig, Of Course

"Each time the media issues a story about my grandfather, we receive unsolicited and often threatening messages by email and on social media platforms."

"The messages describe various means of killing one or all of my family members, including forcing my family members to drink Clorox; gassing my family members; hanging my family members; decapitating my family members; shooting my family members; and killing my family members by other means."

Jamie Rooney, grandson, Helmut Oberlander, former member of German killing squad, Holocaust 

Helmut Oberlander has said previously he was forcibly conscripted by the Nazis when he was 17 years old. On Wednesday, his lawyer sought to have his deportation hearing adjourned. (CIJA)

 

How horrible, what a misery to visit on people innocent of any crime other than being offshoots of a man who during World War II, as a German citizen conscripted into the Nazi military machine, he effectively collaborated with, and facilitated the murder of numberless men, women and children of all ages and conditions who were gassed, hanged, shot, en masse -- all with the intention of exterminating the entirety of Europe's Jewish population, every last one. And coming close to succeeding.

In the 70-plus years since the end of that war from 1939 to 1945, fascist Germany and its Axis allies succeeded in destroying the lives of at least six million Jews and along with them, homosexuals, political dissenters, Roma, and the physically and mentally impaired. Jews were rounded up from villages in the European countryside, and sometimes a mass atrocity of forcing them to dig a trench to stand by it and be shot and thrown into that mass grave proceeded.

In the cities of Europe, often with the assistance of local police and local fascists and local Jew-haters Jews were assembled, placed on cattle cars without food or water or sanitation for transit to work camps, concentration camps, death camps. Experiments with gases on the crowded cattle cars were carried out to kill people while in transit. At arrival at the camps the dead on the cattle cars were shoved aside and the living instructed to go to the left or the right; instantly to the gas chambers, alternately to work in German factories producing war supplies.

 

A group of Jews, including a small boy, is escorted from the Warsaw Ghetto by German soldiers in this April 19, 1943 photo. The picture formed part of a report from SS Gen. Stroop to his Commanding Officer, and was introduced as evidence to the War Crimes trials in Nuremberg in 1945  AP Photo

 

Helmut Oberlander disguised his past when he emigrated from Europe to Canada in 1954. Falsifying his application would be grounds for revoking his citizenship and deporting him back to Germany; war criminals are not permitted entry to Canada -- in theory. In his case his citizenship was revoked four times and the wheels began turning to have him deported back to his country of origin. It has been 35 years that the process has swung back and forth. 

He is now 97 years of age as a retired businessman living in Waterloo, Ontario. His neighbours would have known him as a quiet, nice man. Each time government agencies acted to revoke his citizenship, appeals leading to court judgements reinstated him. The fourth time, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his appeal and he was finally slated for expulsion and deportation. Canada did as much with Rwandans who were part of the Hutu apparatus of government that slaughtered Rwandan Tutsis.

Canada's record in holding responsible and deporting Nazi war criminals involved in the wholesale slaughter of millions of Jews does it no credit. His fraudulent entry to Canada has failed repeatedly to expel him, as the law on Canadian immigration justice reflects.This now aged and ailing war criminal has evaded deportation through permitted appeals time and again. Although he was among the first targeted by a war crimes unit, criminal prosecution proved too difficult, deportation the only avenue.

But even that, in an effort to hold a war criminal responsible for his actions and ridding the country of his presence along with others of his ilk, has failed. Courts overturned his citizenship revocation and intention to deport him in 2001, 2007 and 2012. But even when those orders were finally upheld, more appeals stalled the process indefinitely, to the present. Helmut Oberlander's grandson's tale of woe is one of those instances when "Cry me a river" seems appropriate.

 

The arrival and processing of an entire transport of Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia, a region annexed in 1939 to Hungary from Czechoslovakia, at Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland, in May of 1944. The picture was donated to Yad Vashem in 1980 by Lili Jacob

 

But his lawyers and his family fight on to achieve their goal of having him remain in Canada until his imminent death through natural causes. His reward for loyalty to German fascism in aiding and abetting the deaths of countless people innocent of any crime but the circumstances of their birth as Jews, has been to reap the benefits of living in a country that afforded him a gracious future and the opportunity to raise a family -- opportunities he willingly deprived Jews of, who were innocent of doing grave harm to others.

He had been assigned, still in his teen years as a translator for Einsatzkommando 10a, known as Ek10a, a special police task force operating in occupied territory; 'mobile killing units' connected to the Nazi SS to achieve their goal of mass murder. At his advanced age, mental faculties and physical condition are not at their prime understandably; his constant appeals of the Canadian government's attempts to hold him accountable and rid the country of his presence bought him precious time.

It speaks volumes that an hour-long assessment at his home by a doctor produced this report on his behalf, in support of his family's wishes:

"He was seen today in his family room. He sits on a Lazy Boy chair with his feet on an ottoman. He is next to the sliding doors to a back deck, with a view of the backyard."

"He answered at times tangentially, and at other times his answer was irrelevant and slurred. According to his family this was one of his better days."

"At one point, he interrupted our conversation asking what was out hanging and drying in the backyard -- there was nothing. When asked to clarify, he lost track of his train of thought."

"He hallucinates, seeing squirrels or people with suitcases. We observed him picking at invisible things in the air with his hands. He is generally quite drowsy. Sleep is poor. [His physical functions are in decline]."

"A referral to palliative care services was recommended and accepted."

He will shortly rest at peace, surrounded by his loving family members who will sorrow at his passing. Jewish loss of life has long since been discounted as part of history. Jews, haunted by the colossal tragedy of the Holocaust are often challenged by skeptics that it ever even occurred. Anti-Semites accuse Jews of profiting from the Holocaust by using it as a cudgel with which to demand special attention from a world whose disinterested inaction failed humanity. 

Generations after the Holocaust, the world total of the population of Jews still struggles to achieve the total number that existed pre-Holocaust. Jews remain haunted by the very reality that no one cared that because they are Jews they were 'destined' to die. That people in targeted occupied countries accepted that Jews were dispensable. While taking comfort in the fact that far smaller but far more significant numbers of non-Jews saw it in their courageous hearts to shelter and save a small number of Jews from death.

This photo provided by Paris' Holocaust Memorial shows a German soldier shooting a Ukrainian Jew during a mass execution in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, sometime between 1941 and 1943. This image is titled "The last Jew in Vinnitsa", the text that was written on the back of the photograph, which was found in a photo album belonging to a German soldier.