Helmut Oberlander’s family wants media and public barred as deportation hearing gets underway
WATERLOO REGION - The formal deportation hearing for 97-year-old Helmut Oberlander of Waterloo began Tuesday morning and his lawyers immediately asked for a closed-door proceeding with no public or media allowed.
The actual start of the hearing has been delayed while the Immigration Division and lawyers for Oberlander and the Department of Justice talk about it. One of the government lawyers said Ottawa takes no position on the application.
Oberlander is the last suspected Nazi-war criminal in Canada, and the start of Tuesday's deportation hearing is a historic punctuation mark in the story that began on the battle fields of Eastern Europe when Hitler invaded the former Soviet Union in June 1941.
Oberlander volunteered to join the WaffenSS, and was a member from October 1941 to at least May 1944. During that time he worked as a translator for the Einsatzgruppen - the mobile death squads that killed 1.5 million to two million people, mostly Jews, when the Nazis invaded by former U.S.S.R.
This has always been an immigration matter," said Bernie Farber, who was head of the former Canadian Jewish Congress and lobbied Ottawa for years to remove Oberlander from the country.
He was a member of this unit, and he failed to disclose that when coming to Canada in 1954," said Farber. That's what this has been about from the very beginning."
Oberlander's fate now rests with the Immigration Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.
Oberlander's case was referred to the Immigration Division after his citizenship was stripped for a fourth and final time in 2017. His lawyers have delayed the deportation hearing for nearly four years.
Oberlander's Toronto-based lawyer, Robert Poulton repeatedly filed motions with the Federal Court of Canada, claiming Oberlander is frail, the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult to prepare, Oberlander's memory is not good and the federal government is abusing the deportation process.
In 1963 the RCMP Security Service learned from German military records that Oberlander volunteered for the WaffenSS, and worked as a translator for the Einsatzgruppen. Einsatzgruppen were banned from coming to Canada after the war. But in the early 1960s the RCMP, as a matter policy, did not pursue Nazi war criminals.
That changed in the early 1980s, and the Mounties investigated more than 200 people who came to Canada after the Second World War. They focused on those who concealed their wartime records. Ottawa wanted them stripped of their citizenship and deported. The Mounties described Oberlander as their most promising case.
That work was interrupted by the appointment of the Royal Commission on War Criminals in 1985 - the Deschene Commission. It concluded Oberlander was among 29 cases that warranted special attention because of the seriousness of the allegations and the availability of evidence.
Ottawa adopted the Deschene recommendation to prosecute suspected Nazi war criminals in Canadian courts. Between 1987 and 1995 tried and failed to get convictions in four different cases.
So, Ottawa changed tactics. Instead of criminal trials, it would go use citizenship revocation and deportation. In 1995, Ottawa announced it was going after Oberlander for concealing his wartime activities.
That's when the Oberlander case became public. The wealthy Waterloo developer has been fighting to stay in Canada ever since.
More to come.