A LAWYER FOR HELMUT OBERLANDER, CANADA'S LAST WARTIME NAZI, TOLD AN IMMIGRATION HEARING WEDNESDAY THAT HER CLIENT WILL NEVER GET ON A PLANE TO BE DEPORTED FROM CANADA.

Defence calls process a `waste of resources'

Helmut Oberlander will never get on a plane and be deported from Canada despite being a former member of a Nazi killing squad during the Second World War — and the government is wasting time trying — his lawyer told his deportation hearing.

“There's kind of a ghoulish kind of spectre hanging over this proceeding because it's not expected that he is going to live a long period of time,” Barbara Jackman said at an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing Wednesday.

“Are they ever going to be able to put him on a plane? Or are they just using this to — I don't want to use the word persecution, that's too heavy of a word — but are they using this to merely harass him until the end of his life?

“You don't bring someone like Mr. Oberlander to a hearing when you know that the likelihood of being able to ever carry through the result of the hearing, if he is not successful, is not going to happen.

“It's a waste of resources. It's harmful to him and his family. It carries with it a stigma that has been unfairly put on him.”

Jackman said trying to deport Canada's last-known wartime Nazi, now a frail, 97-year-old retired businessman in Waterloo, Ont., should end because it is cruel, unfair, and unacceptable to Canadians.

“There is no public interest in trying to get an answer at this point on a person whose life is nearly over,” Jackman said.

In response, Angela Marinos, a lawyer with the Department of Justice, said Jackman's characterization of the case is backwards.

“What is wrong, cruel and harsh is serving a Nazi killing unit during the Holocaust and lying about it to enter Canada,” Marinos said of Oberlander's work as a translator with the Einsatzkommando 10a, known as the Ek10a. “There is undeniably a very strong public interest in a having a final decision” in the government's 35-year pursuit of holding Oberlander to account for his wartime activity.

“There are families of those who were brutally murdered by the killing unit that the applicant served waiting for a final decision on his admissibility.

“The person concerned is old now but he wasn't then, when he was helping the Ek10a during the Holocaust.

“There is no safe haven for people who are complicit in crimes against humanity,” said Marinos.

Those battle lines were carved out at the immigration proceedings as Oberlander's legal team asked the IRB to end the government's attempts to deport him, claiming an abuse of process and violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Oberlander entered Canada in 1954 but did not disclose his Nazi past when applying for and receiving Canadian citizenship.

He was among the first targets of a war crimes unit set up by the federal government in the 1990s. Four times his citizenship was cancelled and three times that decision was overturned by the courts.

In 2019, the revocation of his citizenship was finally upheld, leaving him vulnerable to deportation.

His fierce legal fight against every move to deport him, over decades, has drawn out the process and his lawyers said deportation is no longer viable because of his poor mental and physical health. Jackman said Oberlander likely has only months to live.

Marinos, however, said it is never too late to hold someone accountable for crimes against humanity.

“We respectfully invoke the memory of those who perished at the hands of the Ek10a, the killing unit (Oberlander) served for two years.

“Over 20,000 innocent people were executed by the applicant's unit. We must also never forget there is an important public interest to shine the light of the law on the dark history of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

“The stigma, the label, of being complicit with the Nazi regime is a direct result of his own actions and does not mean that he somehow gets a charter right. He has not been cleared.

“There is no charter right to not be labelled a Nazi when one served and was complicit with the Nazi regime and lied about it to gain entry to Canada.”

Ron Poulton, another of Oberlander's lawyers, complained the government has failed in its responsibility to provide Oberlander with thousands of pages of historical material it kept secret.

It was not until a news article published last year in the Waterloo Region Record by reporter Terry Pender that Oberlander's team learned of a trove of previously confidential documents on the case from 1986's Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals.

The government put Pender's article into evidence at the IRB without releasing the documents it was based on to Oberlander.

Poulton said the documents must contain exculpatory evidence in Oberlander's favour since many of the most inflammatory allegations made against him at the inquiry were not accepted by the commission.

IRB adjudicator Karen Greenwood reserved her decision on Oberlander's motions. She cancelled the remaining two days of the hearing and said she would issue her ruling on what happens next as soon as she is able.

THERE IS AN IMPORTANT PUBLIC INTEREST TO SHINE THE LIGHT OF THE LAW ON THE DARK HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR.