Panel of Inquiry Opens Hearing on Nazi War Criminals Living in Canada

A Federal Commission of Inquiry into Nazi war criminals living in Canada heard testimony here this week from representatives of Canadian Jewry, law enforcement and immigration officials and an attorney for local Ukrainian organizations which object vehemently to evidence against war criminals from Soviet bloc sources.

The one-man commission, consisting of former Quebec Superior Court Justice Jules Deschenes, was told by McGill University law professor Irwin Cotler that there is evidence that Canadian immigration officials “however inadvertently,” facilitated the entry of Nazi war criminals into Canada after World War II.

That assertion was confirmed by Randolph Schramm, Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and George O’Leary, chief of the Immigration Department’s Guidelines Division, who also appeared at the hearings at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

Cotler, a prominent jurist and legal consultant, testified on behalf of the Canadian Jewish Congress, along with Alan Rose, the CJC’s executive vice president. He cited as an example Helmut Rauca who was extradited to West Germany in 1983 to face trial on charges of complicity in the murders of 11,000 Lithuanian Jews.

Rauca, who died before the trial began, lived openly in Canada for 20 years under his own name, Cotler pointed out. He said that “If no criminals are brought to justice there will be those who say there were no crimes.”

URGES MEASURES LEADING TO DENATURALIZATION

Leaders of Canadian Jewry are urging the commission to recommend legislative measures that would lead to the denaturalization, deportation and prosecution of war criminals in Canada. Rose called their presence in the country “a moral stain” and made an impassioned plea for action against those “guilty of the most terrible crimes in the history of barbarism.”

He said, “War criminals should not be allowed to receive as a perverse reward for their acts, the Canadian citizenship valued by all of us. There are such persons dwelling amongst us who should be brought to justice.” Rose added that the Canadian government’s “lack of initiative in pursuing the matter over the past 30 years has been a major disappointment to the Canadian Jewish Congress.”

RCMP WAITED 20 YEARS TO BEGIN A SERIOUS PROBE

Schramm testified that the RCMP did not begin serious investigations of alleged Nazi war criminals in Canada until 1982–20 years after an official policy on war criminals was promulgated on September 26, 1962. He said the RCMP officers had been instructed not to conduct investigations unless they received explicit instructions to do so from RCMP headquarters in Ottawa.

He attributed this to concern that individuals and organizations seeking to trace and punish war criminals would try to use the RCMP as an investigative agency for their own purposes. He said that policy was revised in July, 1975, to allow investigation of immigration violations in cases where extradition was possible, through diplomatic channels or by request from a foreign police force with which the RCMP had good relations.

Schramm said it was not until 1982 that the RCMP began investigating leads provided by private citizens about alleged Nazi war criminals in Canada.

O’Leary testified that all German nationals were officially denied entry into Canada until 1950 but after that date the rules were gradually eased and automatic rejection of former Nazi party members and the ban on former members of the SS and Waffen SS was removed in 1955.

But even before 1950, the screening was “patchy,” O’Leary said, because the Canadian government was anxious to receive new immigrants. After 1955 there was no screening; applicants for admission to Canada were judged on their own merits, he told Deschenes.

The CJC said it will submit to the commission a confidential list naming 75 suspected war criminals living in Canada. The list was compiled over a period of several years from a variety of sources.