The Toronto Sun
Fri Dec 11 2009
Page: 22
Section: Editorial/Opinion
Byline: BY BERNIE FARBER, GUEST COLUMNIST

It is comforting that there are authorities in the world who still pursue justice for Nazi war crimes.

While Canada’s record had been dismal over the last few years, Canadians can once again be proud. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper has gone after the remaining few Nazi enablers here in Canada with the gusto it deserves.

We can take pride in the commitment of this government, which has prosecuted war criminals, including modern day killers like Rwandan genocidaire Desire Munyaneza. But sadly, when it comes to Nazis, it is the Federal Court that has let us down.

Consider the case of Helmut Oberlander. Just over two weeks ago, the Federal Court of Appeal once again extended Oberlander’s refuge in Canada. Oberlander was a translator for a Nazi mobile killing unit, Einsatzgruppe D, which was responsible for the murder of more than 90,000 Jews in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.

By his own admission, he served this group’s Einsatzkommando 10a unit from February 1942 to the summer of 1943.

A stirring series of articles aptly titled Oberlander: The Endless War appeared in Oberlander’s hometown newspaper, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record. It chronicled Einsatzkommando 10A’s actions during the time that Oberlander served:

The afternoon is fading. A six-ton van clatters into the courtyard of the children’s home in Jeissk, occupied Ukraine.

Members of a German police unit surround the building to prevent children from escaping.

Asylum officials are told the children are being taken to Krasnodar for medical treatment.

The children are assembled in the courtyard.

The smallest ones and those who cannot walk are carried out of the building.

Nurses cry.

Asylum workers, suspecting the worst, try in vain to prevent the children from being transferred.

Some children climb into the van themselves. There are no seats in the cargo hold. Others try to run away but are caught, beaten and thrown inside.

Volodia Goncharov tries to flee. Two men grab the child by his legs, his head toward the ground. They drag him out of the building and into the van.

The van doors are closed, sealing the crying children into the tin-lined cargo hold. The engine is fired up.

All the children perish inside the truck, killed by poisonous fumes, a Munich court later finds.

A second gassing the same day kills more children.

Such was a day’s work for Einsatzkommando 10a, a Nazi killing unit tasked with slaughtering civilians.

When he applied for entry into Canada, Oberlander failed to disclose his role in the Einsatzkommando 10a. All who served Einsatzkommandos were inadmissible to Canada.

DECADES OF APPEALS

Ultimately, the Federal Court of Canada ruled Oberlander had fraudulently entered Canada, cheating to gain precious Canadian citizenship. After more than a decade of appeals that tested the limits of Canadian due process, the federal government stripped Oberlander of his ill-gotten prize.

Now, astonishingly, the Federal Court of Appeal has thrown this principled move back to the Cabinet for review on a nuanced matter of hyper-technicality that Oberlander himself never raised in his own defense.

It is these kinds of decisions — “Oberlander justice”– that lend credence to the image of Canada as a soft touch for Nazi enablers and perpetrators of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity from contemporary conflicts.

With each reprieve, today’s war criminals — hiding in Rwanda or Darfur or elsewhere — must take some solace. If Canada is so forgiving for the enablers of the Holocaust, why should they not expect the same for themselves?

Meanwhile, the ghosts of the children of Jeissk wait for their justice.

– Farber is chief executive officer of Canadian Jewish Congress and son of a Holocaust survivor

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