The federal government will not commit to disclosing a confidential list of 20 suspected Nazi fugitives who came to Canada after World War II.
The list was compiled in 1985 by a federal war crimes commission. Led by Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Jules Deschenes, the commission identified around 200 unnamed suspects in its public report. But there was a second secret report that identified 20 accused Nazis along with recommendations on prosecution. That list has remained secret under the Access to Information Act.
“Do you support reopening the Deschenes report?” a reporter asked Minister of Justice and Attorney General Arif Virani, during a scrum on Sept. 27.
“What I will always support is ensuring people who have perpetrated war crimes or crimes against humanity or crimes like genocide are brought to justice,” Mr. Virani replied, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.
“Should we reopen the Deschenes report?” asked a reporter.
Calls to Release List
B’nai Brith, in a Feb. 14 submission to the Commons ethics committee, said the secret list must be published. B’nai Brith and 18 other human rights groups in total including Friends of Simon Wiesenthal appealed for the release of the historical records on Sept. 29.
“Canadians deserve to know how and why Nazi war criminals were able to settle in this country,” the groups wrote in their submission.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller told reporters he does not know what is in the second report.
“It is secret, so I don’t know what’s in it either,” Mr. Miller told reporters. “I understand there are many groups, including leading Jewish advocacy groups, that are demanding the release of those names.”
“It is something we could possibly examine again. Not being privy to what is in those documents, I don’t have a particular view that I’ve fully formed on it yet. But in a country like Canada that has not only a difficult history with Nazis in Canada but also one of the most important diaspora of Jewish people, including some of the largest proportions of Holocaust survivors, impunity is absolutely not an option.”
Canada has never successfully prosecuted anyone for Nazi-era war crimes, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. The Department of Justice, in 2017, had a single case, Helmut Oberlander, a Kitchener contractor. Mr. Oberlander was an interpreter with an Eastern European death squad and resisted deportation for more than two decades. He died in 2021 at 97.
Defendants have included Michael Pawlowski, a Renfrew, Ont., carpenter accused of killing 410 Jews in Belarus in 1942, and Stephen Reistetter, a St. Catharines autoworker, charged with participating in Holocaust transports in Slovakia in 1942.
Imre Finta, a Toronto restaurateur, was acquitted on charges that as a Hungarian police captain in 1944, he participated in Holocaust transports of 8,617 Jews. The Supreme Court in 1994 upheld Finta’s acquittal after concluding the “defence of obedience to superior orders and the peace officer’s defence are available to members of the military or police forces in prosecutions for war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Mr. Finta died in 2003, at 91.
