A Canadian citizen accused of belonging to a notorious Nazi murder squad has been kicked out of the United States and sent back to Canada, according to the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations.
Helmut Oberlander, 71, will face citizenship revocation proceedings in Canada based on charges that he took part in executions of civilians during World War II.
Eli Rosenbaum, OSI director, said that Oberlander’s removal from the United States last week should send a “powerful and unambiguous message far beyond our borders: Under no circumstances will the United States allow itself to become a haven for those who are credibly accused by other governments of complicity in the barbaric crimes of the Nazi regime.”
The justice Department said Nazi documents show that Oberlander, an ethnic German from Ukraine, was a decorated member of a unit of the Einsatzgruppen. These were mobile killing units that Germans used to annihilate Jews in Soviet territories overrun by Nazis during World War II.
The Canadian government started proceedings April 28 to revoke Oberlander’s Canadian citizenship, which he obtained in 1960 after immigrating to Canada from Germany in 1954.
On the day the proceedings began, Oberlander, a home builder, disappeared from his Ontario residence. The OSI traced him to Florida.
Oberlander agreed to go back to Canada rather than face deportation hearings in the United States.
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