Ukrainian askaris standing near the bodies of murdered Jews in Warsaw, 1943. Thousands of individuals who served the Nazis came to Canada after the war. (Photo credit: Bundesarchiv).
By Newell Durnbrooke
The Canadian government is refusing to release the list of 900 alleged Nazi war criminals who came to Canada after the Second World War.
And now the questions begin on why Canada is hiding the identities of those who eagerly served Adolf Hitler? And who is on that list?
The list, compiled almost 40 years ago for the federal government’s Deschênes Commission, had been requested by a number of individuals and groups using the federal Access to Information law. The list of names is in the possession of Library and Archives Canada (LAC) in Ottawa.
LAC officials consulted in June and July with what they called a “discrete group of individuals or organizations” about whether the list should be made public. Those consulted included members of Canada’s Ukrainian community and other eastern European communities whose members are believed to be on the list.
But LAC didn’t include Holocaust survivors or Holocaust scholars who had advocated for a full release of the list of alleged Nazi war criminals.
Some of the individuals and organizations consulted by LAC argued against releasing any of the information, warning it could be embarrassing or lead to prosecutions of the alleged war criminals. Other stakeholders who advised LAC worried the list would embarrass Canada’s Ukrainian community or be used by Russians for propaganda purposes.
Large numbers of soldiers from a Ukrainian Waffen SS division fled to Canada after the war and some are believed to be on the list. In addition, large numbers of Nazi collaborators from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists or OUN also came to Canada. The OUN has been accused of being involved in the murders of between 50,000 to 100,000 Jews and Poles. The list is believed to also include Nazi collaborators from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The Canadian government’s decision to continue the secrecy surrounding the names of the alleged Nazi war criminals has prompted concerns about why Canada is trying to protect those alleged to have taken part in the murders of women and children.
Jaime Kirzner-Roberts of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies in Toronto noted the secrecy continues to provide the Nazi war criminals who moved to our country with “total impunity,”
“This entire consultation process was stacked from the very beginning to shut out the voices of Holocaust survivors and organizations in order to ensure this shameful outcome,” she told the Globe and Mail. “Nazi war criminals should never have been allowed to make their way into our country and Canadians deserve transparency.”
There are also concerns about whether the records are safe in the hands of the Canadian government, with some suggesting in online conversations that the records could be secretly destroyed. That would erase forever the embarrassing details about the Nazis who came to this country.
Canada has already faced international ridicule when all Members of Parliament gave two standing ovations last year in the Commons to a member of Ukraine’s Waffen SS. Yaroslav Hunka was called “a hero” and cheered by the MPs. Seated near the Waffen SS man was none other than Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre who also applauded for the man who swore allegiance to Hitler.
Holocaust survivors and Canadians who lost family members in the war against Nazi Germany were less than impressed, the Ottawa Citizen reported. Holocaust survivors wrote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about friends killed by Hunka’s division, the 14th SS Galician, while families of Canadian soldiers killed fighting the Nazis during the Second World War peppered MPs with questions about why they honoured the Waffen SS soldier.
The emails pointed out the stupidity of the parliamentarians for not realizing that Hunka had fought against allied forces during the Second World War.
One Holocaust survivor pointed out to Trudeau that the 14th division of the Waffen SS murdered their friends in Slovakia in late 1944.
Others questioned how members of the Waffen SS were allowed into Canada after the war or pointed out that other Waffen SS members executed Canadian soldiers they had taken prisoner.
Further reading:
https://thewalrus.ca/why-is-canada-protecting-the-names-of-suspected-nazis/
