A suggestion that Nazi war criminals living in Canada should be deprived of Canadian citizenship is advanced by the Canadian Jewish Congress in the current issue of its organ, Congress Bulletin. An editorial in this issue charges that there are known murderers and accessories living in Canada “and it is unlikely that they will ever be brought before any courts for their heinous capital crimes.”
The Congress asserts some of the Nazis slipped into Canada in the immediate postwar period when security checks were not rigorous enough to catch them. Canada, it notes, refuses to surrender people for trial or punishment unless there is extradition legislation.
“Correct and justifiable as the legal position may very well be,” the editorial says, “there is something fundamentally wicked for a civilized country to allow known murderers to live their lives untouched, unmolested and living off the public purse.” If such persons cannot be jailed, it adds, the least Canadian legislators can do is deprive them of their “patent of nobility” — Canadian citizenship — which, the Congress says, they obtained by fraud and misrepresentation.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
