1985: A LOOK BACK: Nazi hunt in Canada (12/29/85)

1985: A LOOK BACK

Nazi hunt in Canada

"There have been statements...that there are indeed within Canada a considerable number of (Nazi war) criminals who may have escaped to this country in order to avoid prosecution for the crimes they have committed or to avoid punishment for such crimes...The government has concluded...that we must go to the very depths of the questions posed so that we may be assured that we are not, unknowingly, harboring within our midst some of the individuals guilty of committing the horrible Nazi war crimes of World War II."

With these words, Canadian Justice Minister John Crosbie rose in the House of Commons to announce the creation of a commission of inquiry on Nazi war criminals.

The February 7 announcement came after weeks of speculation that the government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney would yield to pressure from Jewish groups and launch an investigation into how many alleged war criminals live in Canada, how they got into the country and how they might be brought to justice.

While Jewish groups and Canadian editorial writers applauded the government's decision, Canada's 600,000-member Ukrainian community feared the worst: a McCarthy era witch hunt to find East European immigrants who fought against the Soviets during World War II and may have seen the Germans as liberators.

"The Ukrainian Canadian community has had to endure frequent allegations of criminal collaboration with the Nazis in the extermination of the Jewish population in Ukraine and Eastern Poland...The alleged criminal activity of a few individuals (has been) generalized and projected over a whole community," the Ukrainian Canadian Committee said in a statement released at a spring conference in Toronto.

In announcing its decision, the federal government said it would appoint one of Canada's most respected jurists to head the one-man war criminals commission: Justice Jules Deschenes of the Quebec Supreme Court. The commission was given a $1 million budget, the freedom to travel wherever it chooses and a December 31 deadline.

Thanks to the help of the Vienna-based Simon Wiesenthal Center an the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, the Deschenes Commission didn't have to do a lot of homework to come up with a list of suspects.

Sol Littman, a Toronto spokesman for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center of Holocaust Studies, went public with news that he was able to track down the names of 28 suspected Ukrainian war criminals by using the Toronto phone book and checking social security numbers. The Wiesenthal organization also said that up to 3,000 Nazi war criminals or wartime collaborators entered Canada after the war; that as many as 2,000 are living in the country; and that there are 218 Ukrainians in Canada who were members of the Nazi SS. The Soviet Embassy sent a separate list of alleged war criminals to the government.

The Ukrainian community reacted angrily to these allegations. At news conferences and interviews spokesmen for the Ukrainian community said they wanted to see war criminals brought to justice, but that they did not want to see any witch hunts. A massive lobbying campaign was launched to bring this message to Canadians, spearheaded by the Winnipeg-based Ukrainian Canadian Committee. The national umbrella organization established a subcommittee, the Civil Liberties Commission, and appointed Toronto lawyer John Gregorovich as its head. The CLC set up a Toronto office and reportedly drew some $100,000 a month in donations. Among its activities: hiring high-profile Canadian lawyer John Sopinka to represent the Ukrainian Canadian Committee before the commission; placing advertisements in major Canadian publications that warn against the use of Soviet evidence; gathering research data about the participation of Ukrainians in World War II; and pressuring politicians to convince the government to disallow the use of Soviet evidence in the investigation.

Thousands of Ukrainian Canadians and a group of back-bench Members of Parliament from the ruling Progressive Conservative Party voiced fierce opposition at news in the fall that Mr. Deschenes was thinking of going to the Soviet Union to determine if serious allegations against alleged war criminals living in Canada are true.

After holding open hearings on the admissibility of Soviet evidence, Justice Deschenes released a 47-page report on November 17 announcing that the commission will go to the Soviet Union, Poland and three Western countries to collect evidence on at least 15 suspected war criminals. But Justice Deschenes set six strict guidelines to which the countries must agree before evidence is collected. His ground rules included: access to original documents on war crimes; use of independent interpreters; and the freedom to examine witnesses in accordance with Canadian rules of evidence.

Most recently, the deadline for the Deschenes Commission to complete its investigation and report to the government has been extended by six months to June 30. Mr. Deschenes requested the decision after he decided to send counsel abroad to gather more evidence. The extra time will allow the former Quebec Superior Court Justice to submit two reports: a public document listing possible actions against Nazi war criminals and a confidential report to the Cabinet containing the names of suspected criminals.

No one knows for sure what, if any, course of action will be taken by the government after Justice Deschenes submits his report. What is known is that, in the past, Canadian royal commission reports have often been shelved by the government of the day to collect dust. But well-informed sources in Canada point out that the country's well organized Jewish lobby and the media will not let the government off the hook until war criminals are brought to justice.

Indeed, the issue of Nazi war criminals has long since been a hot potato that few previous governments dared to pick up. The Liberal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, for instance, was charged by Simon Wiesenthal with not being cooperative in efforts to capture some of the more than 200 war criminals believed living in Canada. Mr. Trudeau refused to establish an inquiry in spite of these charges.

If anything, the events of the past 11 months in Canada have convinced Ukrainian Canadians of the need to better organize themselves. The community, under the leadership of the Ukrainian Canadian Community, has experienced several difficulties in getting its message across to the media and preventing the use of Soviet evidence in Canadian courts. This, in spite of the fact that the community leaders had been warned years ago that Ukrainians might once again be branded war criminals.