Canada's last known war-era Nazi gets reprieve from deportation
HEARING PUT OFF
What was supposed to be the start of the final hearing in the 25-year effort to kick Helmut Oberlander out of Canada for Nazi war crimes was cancelled Monday, after yet another legal battle forced immigration authorities to postpone his deportation hearing.
Oberlander, who turns 97 next week, was a member of a notorious Nazi killing squad in Ukraine and Russia during the Second World War and faces deportation.
His is believed to be the last Nazi wartime case in Canada.
The Immigration and Refugee Board scheduled a hearing for Monday against the retired businessman living in Waterloo, Ont., over whether he is ineligible to remain in Canada as a foreign national who committed crimes against humanity and lied about his past when applying for citizenship.
Instead, a board official announced the case was “administratively postponed.”
The IRB had no choice in the matter, after a Federal Court judge issued a stay of proceedings — at least until next month — at the request of Oberlander's lawyer, to allow more time for his appeals.
Justice Richard Southcott granted the postponement on Friday, and he left the door open for more time beyond the March 19 window, if needed.
Another in a long list of legal challenges and delays outraged members of the Jewish community, including Holocaust survivors, who called on the government to act swiftly to deport Oberlander.
“As survivors, we are immensely pained that Nazi war criminals continue to evade justice by concealing their past,” said Pinchas Gutter, co-president of the Canadian Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants.
“Oberlander has cynically abused our courts to avoid prosecution in Germany.”
Shimon Koffler Fogel, chief executive of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, a Jewish advocacy group, called it “obscene abuse of the Canadian justice system,” that has stretched over decades.
“Oberlander was a member of a Nazi death squad responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Jewish women, men, and children. The Federal Court ruled in 2018 that he contributed to the murderous aims of the unit and should never have been allowed to come here. If he evades justice again, it will be a disgrace to our justice system and slap in the face of Holocaust survivors and their descendants.”
B'nai Brith Canada, a Jewish Human Rights organization, said giving more leeway to Oberlander is “a disgrace to Canada's reputation.”
Requests for comment from Oberlander's two lawyers went unanswered prior to deadline.
Canada has been trying to deport Oberlander for decades because of his Nazi past, and lying about it when he immigrated to Canada. Four times his Canadian citizenship was stripped from him and three times that decision was overturned by the courts, in 2001, 2007, and 2012.
In 2019 the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear Oberlander's appeal of the last revocation of his citizenship. He was found to have entered Canada fraudulently in 1954 by failing to disclose his activities with the Nazis, tainting his citizenship application.
His lawyers have continued to fight, however. His family has said they wish for him to remain in Canada until his death.
Court documents say he is barely able to see or hear and has diminished mental capacity to understand the proceedings against him.
Oberlander is an ethnic German who lived in the Soviet Union — in what is now Ukraine — during the Second World War when it was invaded by Nazi forces. Then a teenager, he was assigned to work as a translator for Einsatzkommando 10a, known as Ek10a, one of the special police task forces that operated in occupied territory.
A Canadian judge described them as “mobile killing units” used by the Nazi SS for mass murder.
Oberlander's family earlier said he should be regarded as a former child soldier because he was “forcibly conscripted on the threat of death by the Nazis at age 17.”
In 2019, after the Supreme Court denied his appeal, his family issued a statement saying he “has been unjustly persecuted for 24 years by the Government of Canada. Mr. Oberlander has never been charged with any crime.”
Oberlander was among the first targets of a war crimes unit set up by the federal government in the 1990s. Because of the passage of time and the difficulty in obtaining criminal prosecutions, deportation was turned to as a more realistic goal.