Laura Stricker

Too late to search for new cases, Farber says

With most Nazi war criminals in Canada having died without facing justice, Ottawa should focus on pursuing known cases instead of trying to track down new ones that will never see the light of day, the CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress says.

“The time has come to acknowledge that there will be no further Second World War cases brought forward,” Bernie Farber told 150 people last week at the Pride of Israel Synagogue as part of Holocaust Education Week.

“If today a new Nazi war criminal was found in this country, the average time that case takes to weave its way through Canadian court is 14 years. The average age of a Nazi war criminal now in Canada is 93…The CJC calls on the government of Canada to resolve the remaining World War II cases involving individuals whom the courts have determined fradulently obtained Canadian citizenship.”

Efforts by successive Canadian governments to get of rid of Nazi war criminals living in Canada have been “shameful,” Farber said, adding that allowing these men to live in Canada alongside Holocaust survivors is an insult.

“[The presence of] Nazi war criminals and enablers in this country is an affront to the privilege of Canadian citizenship,” he said.

Farber, who is the son of a Holcaust survivor, said that only two prime ministers - Conservatives Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper - have taken meaningful action against Nazis living in Canada.

In 1985, Mulroney set up a commission to see whether Nazi war criminals were living in this country. The Deschenes Commission discovered that almost 1,000 of them had entered Canada after the war. As of 1985, there were 250 cases that needed to be examined further, and 20 that required immediate action.

“It is to the credit of Brian Mulroney that he was the first Canadian prime minister to take any significant action of this file,” Farber said. “He took it seriously, perhaps because the family of his wife knew persecution under the Nazis. It serves to ask a sad question: must we be part of the history of genocide to understand that its victims require justice be done?”

Farber said many people have trouble understanding why justice is still being sought more than 60 years after the Holocaust.

“Public opinion wondered why, decades after the fact, the Jews pursued men who were increasingly old and feeble,” he said.

“Why, they asked, could we simply not forgive and forget, and move on? Why indeed. Because age should be no shield against justice. Because the victims of Nazism were never spared because of their age or gender. Because the men who stood accused as criminals or enablers performed their heinous acts as young men should not be granted a free pass because they have so far managed to escape justice.”

Farber, who has spent more than 20 years with Congress, also described attempts to bring Nazi war criminals to justice as a “national disgrace.”

He cited the case of Helmut Oberlander, a Waterloo Region resident who is accused of being a translator for Einsatzgruppe D (a mobile killing squad).

In 2000, a federal court ruled that Oberlander lied about his service during the war when he emigrated here from Germany in the 1950s, and he had his citizenship revoked by the federal cabinet. That decision was overturned on appeal, but in 2007, the federal government under Harper revoked his citizenship again.

“Every step of the way, Oberlander’s lawyers have cried out that their client has been denied due process before the law. I wish that even one of the victims of Einsatzgruppe D had been given a fraction of the justice that has been made available to this man,” Farber said.

He urged everyone in the audience to write to their MPs to demand action.

“Can you imagine if each of you sent a letter to your member of Parliament?” he asked. “They will send a copy of that letter to the minister of immigration and citizenship. And tomorrow when she wakes up she will have 150 e-mails asking her to take action on Nazi war criminals.

“The idea is to generate excitement around this.”