Holocaust survivors still wait for justice

November 25, 2009 3:02 AM

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Holocaust+survivors+still+wait+justice/2263787/story.html

Back in 1995, when Helmut Oberlander left Canada to avoid a bit of trouble that was looming about his Canadian citizenship and his Nazi past, he took a little jaunt to Marco Island, Fla.

When the U.S. Office of Special Investigations caught up with him there, he agreed with the OSI that he really ought to return to Canada. OSI director Eli M. Rosenbaum said at the time: "The rapid tracing of Helmut Oberlander and his removal . . . from this country 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."

Now, if only Canada felt the same way.

Here we are, 14 years later, and Oberlander, now 86, is not only still in Canada, but last week, the Federal Court of Appeal ordered the federal cabinet to re-examine the decision to revoke his citizenship. Reason? The court seized upon the idea that Oberlander served with the Nazis' mobile killing unit, Einsatzgruppe D, under duress.

Mark Freiman, president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, calls this a "hyper-technical point of interpretation" because really, all that matters is the big lie. As CJC chief executive Bernie Farber says, "You were a member of a killing unit and you didn't put that forward when you came to Canada, you lied to obtain citizenship."

Reached by telephone Tuesday, Farber said: "Duress was brought up at the last minute. There were, sadly, many soldiers who were forced into service during the war. But it's been historically proven that if anybody wanted out of a killing unit, they were able to get out; they weren't sent to the Russian front, they were sent elsewhere . . . . He certainly had the opportunity to know what was going on. He had the choice to leave."

Einsatzgruppe D was responsible for the deaths of 90,000 Jews. Oberlander's section, Einsatzkommando 10A, was responsible for the deaths of more than 23,000, in southern Ukraine and Crimea. Oberlander, who spoke German, Russian and Ukrainian, served as the unit's translator. Tuesday, Oberlander's daughter, Irene, told the media her father was never a Nazi.

Farber said: "Oberlander may not have pulled the gun, but he was a member of a killing unit. Every member, whether a cook or (someone who would) shine shoes, was part of the grease that made the engine of murder run." What would such a unit need a translator for? Farber said that with so many Jews of different linguistic backgrounds being rounded up, "the killing unit, when they brought people into the woods to shoot them, they needed people to give instructions. I'm not saying Oberlander did that, but it's fair to speculate."

A detailed story on the activities of Oberlander's unit, much of it citing testimony provided to the Munich State Court, and published in 2000 in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, which would be local resident Oberlander's daily paper, stated that "Heinz Seetzen, who came to the death squad from the Gestapo, was a hard leader who is reputed to have ordered all Einsatzkommando 10A members to participate in executions. Postwar prosecutors uncovered Seetzen's alleged execution order while investigating members of the death squad through the 1960s." Historian Lawrence Stokes says in the article that Seetzen "is quoted over and over again by different of these policemen, being interrogated, as having said that. No one's got it in writing."

Farber is the child of Holocaust survivors. His father's first wife and their two little boys were gassed in the Treblinka death camp. "There is no statute of limitations on such vile acts," Farber said. And while many war criminals and Nazi enablers are "old and doddering, some are sick and feeble; we have to think of them as they were then, committing some of the most vile crimes in human history. They were young, they were brutes, they were bullies, they were murderers."

The U.S. has revoked the citizenship of more than 100 of these people and deported them. Canada has done the same for just one --Jacob Luitjens.

"It's terrible to think that the perpetrators and victims came together to this country and they shared the same wealth and beauty of this land, when really only the victims should have been allowed to do that," Farber said.

What can be done? The federal government can appeal the ruling on Oberlander to the Supreme Court. Not only can it do this, it has a moral obligation to do it. Carole Saindon, a Justice Department spokeswoman, told the media the government is looking at its options as it examines the ruling.

The survivors are counting on Ottawa to see that justice is done. They've waited more than 60 years. Let's hope Ottawa does not let them down.