An unknown variety of Nazi conflict criminals and collaborators lived out their lives in peace in Canada, in locations such because the Mennonite farms and villages of Waterloo Area.
They had been amongst 1000’s of ethnic Germans introduced into Canada after the Second World Conflict — lots of them members of probably the most reprehensible items of the Nazi conflict machine — by a gaggle known as the Canadian Christian Council for the Resettlement of Refugees (CCCRR), which included the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).
For many years, Ottawa refused to launch the whole lot of the Rodal report. The Waterloo Area File filed an Entry to Info request for a whole copy six years in the past.
The Deschênes Fee mentioned there have been 29 circumstances of suspected Nazi conflict criminals in Canada that warranted particular consideration due to the seriousness of the allegations and the supply of proof towards the lads.
Amongst these precedence circumstances was Waterloo resident Helmut Oberlander. The File filed an Entry to info Act request for the information on the opposite 28 circumstances, however Library and Archives Canada has refused to launch any of the paperwork.
Earlier than he died in September 2021 Oberlander was entrance web page information in Waterloo Area, combating a deportation order on and off since 1995. That’s when Ottawa introduced it was going to strip Oberlander of his citizenship and deport him for failing to reveal his voluntary service with Einsatzgruppe D, one of many Nazi’s cell loss of life squads that operated in Jap Europe, Soviet Ukraine and the Caucuses.
Helmut Oberlander in a uniform of the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the inner safety service of the SS. Oberlander volunteered for the SS, and labored as an interpreter for a cell loss of life squad that was answerable for the homicide of 1000’s of Jewish males, girls and kids. He was from one of many oldest Mennonite communities in what’s now Ukraine.
CBC
Oberlander and his spouse got here to Canada in Might 1954, sponsored by a German relative in Waterloo. He was ‘Volksdeutsche’ — a ‘racial’ time period coined by the Nazis for ethnic Germans who didn’t maintain German citizenship — from one of many oldest Mennonite communities in southern Russia. Oberlander was not dropped at Waterloo Area by the MCC, however others had been.
The Rodal report makes it clear there have been many extra — the truth is it was simpler for Nazi conflict criminals to come back to Canada after the Second World Conflict than Jews who needed to rebuild their lives in Canada following the Holocaust.
Refugee assist teams and immigration officers most popular Germans and Baltic folks, deemed to be extremely enticing and fascinating immigrants, “who were likely to have included — and indeed have been shown to have included in their midst persons who were Nazi collaborators and alleged war criminals,” says Rodal.
Throughout 1947-1949, the MCC and the CCCRR helped convey 6,005 Mennonites to Canada, and 15,000 Volksdeutsche — primarily from the Western and Southwestern areas of the previous Soviet Union that grew to become Ukraine in 1991.
About 807 of them settled in Ontario, primarily Kitchener-Waterloo, St. Catharines and Leamington. Many who first settled in different components of Canada later moved to this area, say Mennonite historians.
Some Mennonites who had been former SS and Nazi collaborators got here to this area, however not many, mentioned Troy Osborne, a historical past professor and dean of Mennonite research at Conrad Grebel College in Waterloo.
“I don’t think there were a lot in this area,” mentioned Osborne.
However researchers are reluctant to dig into this chapter of Mennonite historical past within the area.
“Part of the reason I think it is frosted over around here, you are talking about people’s grandparents, it is not just about the MCC, it is about people’s own family histories too,” mentioned Osborne. “That’s what I’ve discovered.”
Library and Archives Canada launched probably the most full model of the Rodal report in February 2024 following a global scandal six months earlier. The Home of Commons gave two standing ovations to a former member of the Ukrainian-SS in September 2023.
That’s when Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a visitor of honour in Ottawa and spoke in Parliament to thank Canada for assist in the conflict towards Russia.
Within the viewers was 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, a former member of the Ukrainian SS — a part of the Waffen-SS largely made up of non-German volunteers.
Federal politicians and their visitors gave Hunka two standing ovations after he was launched as a real hero of Ukraine by the Speaker of the Home, Anthony Rota, a Liberal MP from North Bay.
When Hunka’s background grew to become public, Prime Minister Trudeau apologized, and Rota resigned as Speaker of the Home. Immigration Minister Marc Miller acknowledged Canada has a darkish historical past relating to Nazis, and mentioned requests to launch extra labeled details about it might be revisited.
In February 2024, Library and Archives Canada launched nearly all the things from the Rodal Report, minus one web page and a handful of redactions.
Historian Alti Rodal wrote the background examine for the Deschenes Fee on Nazi Conflict Criminals in Canada. The 600-page doc, often known as The Rodal Report, particulars what number of former members of the SS and different items of the Nazi conflict machine got here to Canada.
Ukrainian Jewish Encounter’
The report lays out intimately a seeming indifference to conflict crimes by officers, brazenly discriminatory immigration insurance policies, antisemitism, and safety screening that was lax to non-existent.
“It would be rash to assume that significant numbers of war criminals and Nazi collaborators did not enter Canada,” Rodal says in her report.
The unique SS had been early, enthusiastic supporters of Adolf Hitler, pledging loyalty to him alone. Later, the Nazis simply discovered sufficient volunteers within the Baltics, Jap Europe, the Balkans and Soviet Ukraine to type divisions known as the Waffen-SS.
The SS and Waffen-SS ran the focus camps and loss of life camps. They had been largely answerable for finishing up the Holocaust.
The Nuremberg Conflict Crimes Tribunal dominated the SS as a complete, together with Waffen-SS divisions, a felony group. From 1945-1950 they had been formally banned from coming to Canada, together with members of the SD (the brutal SS intelligence company that operated in tandem with the SS), the Brown Shirts, or Storm Troopers, often known as the SA, and members of the Einsatzgruppen cell loss of life squads that killed 1.5 million folks, largely Jews, in 1941-1943.
After the conflict, the Allies suspected many males from Jap Europe and Soviet Ukraine had volunteered for a few of the Nazi’s worst items, says Rodal. Amongst that group had been the Volksdeutsche residing in Jap Europe and Soviet Ukraine.
By 1950 Canada had elevated its immigration quotas and was stress-free its insurance policies on the banned teams and favouring ‘desirable’ ethnic German immigrants.
Rodal ties the CCCRR — an umbrella group that represented Baptist, Lutheran, Mennonite and Catholic church teams primarily of German origin — with the modifications in authorities coverage.
The group lobbied Ottawa tirelessly to drop the immigration bans on former SS members, and senior bureaucrats did, with out telling Home of Commons or the Canadian public, says Rodal, setting the stage for Germany to turn into the most important supply of immigrants to Canada within the Nineteen Fifties.
The church group “is closely linked to changes in government policy with regard to admitting enemy aliens and former members of the Nazi party and the Waffen SS, and other Nazi organizations,” says Rodal.
In reality, Helmut Rauca, a former member of Einsatzgruppe A, one of many Nazis’ cell loss of life squads answerable for killing 1000’s of Jews in Latvia, got here to Canada within the late Nineteen Forties as a CCCRR sponsored refugee, below his personal title, settling in Toronto.
West Germany issued an arrest warrant for Rauca in 1963, and Canada deported him in 1983 to face charges of crimes towards humanity. He died in a West German jail awaiting trial.
By an order-in-council, Ottawa offered funds to the CCCRR, says Rodal, and it loved direct entry to ministers of immigration, deputy-ministers of immigration, and the prime minister.
It additionally had entry to a robust group of senior bureaucrats that screened sure visa functions, the civil service and the navy searching for communists, fellow travellers and gays. It was known as the Safety Panel, and it all the time met behind closed doorways.
In 1950 the Safety Panel ranked communists as probably the most harmful safety menace dealing with Canada, and former members of the SS, the Nazi Social gathering or Nazi collaborators had been ranked decrease, says Rodal.
On the identical time, Jews confronted widespread discrimination when making use of for visas to Canada and had been usually rejected by screening officers as communists or communist sympathizers, perpetuating Third Reich propaganda that equated Jews with communism, says Rodal.
The Rodal report is supported by many Mennonite historians.
The Mennonite Central Committee has launched stories by 12 historians with entry to MCC archives. Their analysis was summarized in a particular, 68-page particular version of the MCC e-newsletter “Intersections” within the fall of 2021.
To assist Mennonites get out of Europe after the conflict, the MCC publicly and systemically downplayed the collaboration of tens of 1000’s of Mennonites with the Nazis, says that particular version. A lot of them had been coached on what to say throughout interviews with immigration and safety officers: You aren’t German, however Mennonite, possibly Dutch; sorry however all my ID was misplaced; and most significantly you had been compelled to affix any Nazi navy unit, you by no means volunteered.
Mennonites had loved a privileged standing below German occupation, notes the Intersections particular version.
“MCC partnered with or directly hired multiple former Nazi officials and even SS agents because of the expertise they had built promoting fascist schemes to resettle Mennonites during WWII,” says the publication.
Heinrich Hamm (proper), workplace supervisor of the MCC refugee camp at Gronau, Germany, greets former Mennonite troopers launched from internment in Allied camps after the Second World Conflict. Through the occupation of the Soviet Ukraine, Hamm collaborated with the Nazis, and after evacuating to Stutthof, Poland in 1944 he was an administrator at a Mennonite-owned munitions manufacturing unit that used slave labor from the Stutthof focus camp. After the conflict, he organized a listing of all recognized Mennonite refugees for the MCC and directed efforts to free Mennonite POWs interned in Allied camps. He immigrated to Canada in 1948.
Mennonite Heritage Archives
One of many former Nazi officers employed by MCC to assist Mennonite refugees was Heinrich Wiebe. The Nazis had put in Wiebe as mayor of the Ukrainian metropolis of Zaporizhzhia. He carried out Nazi racial insurance policies, confiscated the property of Jews and moved them right into a ghetto. Wiebe fled to the west when the Soviet Crimson Military started pushing the German navy out of Russian territory.
With MCC assist Wiebe and his spouse Olga got here to Canada, and settled in Vancouver after the conflict.
MCC Canada director Rick Cober Bauman supported the choice to herald impartial historians to assessment the archives. It was not a unanimous resolution, and a minority was against digging into outdated relationships with Nazis, he mentioned.
“All things considered I am pleased that we did it,” mentioned Bauman, who grew up in a rural a part of Waterloo Area, the son of a preacher. “I think it was a good decision.”
Aileen Friesen is among the many new era of students asking questions on what Mennonites did earlier than, throughout and after the Second World Conflict. She wrote about Wiebe within the particular version of Intersections.
She is a College of Winnipeg historian, government director of the Plett Basis, which researches the historical past of Mennonites who got here from Russia within the 1870s and settled in Western Canada, and co-director of the centre for transnational Mennonite research. For years she’s researched the Holocaust, Soviet Ukraine and Mennonites.
Friesen stresses it was a sophisticated time for thousands and thousands of determined and traumatized folks on the transfer after the conflict, with 1000’s attempting to cover their Nazi ties.
The MCC had about 100 folks on the bottom in postwar Europe to type by means of all the things and resolve who to assist.
The MCC was based in 1920 to assist Mennonites get out of the newly fashioned Soviet Union and are available to Canada. Within the early Nineteen Thirties Soviet chief Josef Stalin engineered a famine in Ukraine that killed thousands and thousands, together with many Mennonites. Some Mennonite farmers had been killed by the Soviets throughout anti-Kulak marketing campaign that focused affluent peasants in Soviet Ukraine. Then Stalin had 750,000 folks executed throughout a bloody purge of political opponents known as “the Great Terror.”
“You look at the 1930s in Ukraine, just indescribable, but then you look at what happened next in the Holocaust, also indescribable,” mentioned Friesen.
The MCC helped some Mennonites and Volksdeutsche come to Canada who had been in any other case ineligible to come back due to their conflict information, she mentioned, however it’s tough to know what number of. A few of the solutions could also be in archives in Ukraine that are actually threatened by Russian drones and missiles.
“It is heartbreaking,” mentioned Friesen. “We are finally at the stage to tell the story more fully and these archives might not be there to do it.”
In 1948 the MCC helped Jacob Loitjens to migrate to Paraguay from the Netherlands. In 1950 a Dutch court docket sentenced Loitjens to life in jail for conflict crimes. In 1962, Loitjens, his spouse and three kids got here to Canada from Paraguay with MCC assist and settled in Vancouver the place he taught biology at UBC. He joined the First Mennonite Church in Vancouver and in 1972 he grew to become a Canadian citizen.
Within the early Nineteen Nineties he was stripped of his citizenship and deported, however not earlier than the MCC and the Mennonite church publicly defended Loitjens and spoke towards his deportation.
This isn’t simply Mennonite historical past however Canadian historical past and everybody ought to care about it as a result of many various immigrant teams are implicated within the very tough story of the Holocaust, mentioned Friesen in an interview from Winnipeg.
“The antisemitism in the Christian churches within the broader society still needs to be addressed, we can’t ignore that element of it,” mentioned Friesen. “Because it is important to be very honest about ways in which prejudice has encouraged people to take violent actions.”
After the publication of the particular e-newsletter, MCC management went by means of coaching and workshops on antisemitism.
“We take a firm and clear stand against antisemitism as an organization,” mentioned Bauman. “We have ongoing anti-racism work both internationally and, in the U.S., and Canada.”
In the summertime of 1949, the UN’s Worldwide Refugee Group ordered a pause within the MCC’s immigration work, says Rodal. American intelligence had screened some Mennonite refugees getting ready to board a ship in Germany certain for the U.S. and Canada.
The People discovered many former members of the Ukrainian-SS and former members of the Nazi’s cell loss of life squads — the Einsatzgruppen — and German residents among the many Mennonite refugees chosen by the MCC, says Rodal. The UN refugee company handed on the warning to Ottawa that many Mennonites had volunteered for the Nazi’s “most reprehensible units,” says Rodal.
Cornelius Klassen, who performed a key position because the European director of refugee and resettlement companies for the MCC from 1945-1954, communicated straight with A.L. Jolliffe, the Director of the Immigration Department and the federal Division of Mines and Assets, to elucidate.
“He presented the argument the Mennonites were tricked into German citizenship by being asked to sign blank forms when they were in the camps in Germany, forms which turned out to be applications for German citizenship,” says Rodal.
Jolliffe was skeptical, however there was stress to convey extra immigrants to Canada as labour shortages had been holding again financial development, says Rodal.
The Worldwide Refugee Group got here up with a compromise — permit this ship load of Mennonites to sail, and people who had been now barred from the U.S. may go to both Canada or Paraguay. The names of future immigrants could be screened with title checks on the Berlin Doc Centre — an enormous repository of all German navy information.
They had been allowed to come back to Canada, and a few yr later in April 1950, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, the Safety Panel and the cupboard determined to drop the blanket ban on German nationals and Volksdeutsche, says Rodal.
The change was made quietly, by orders-in-council, says Rodal. They did that understanding it was unattainable to get dependable info on conflict information for these from Jap Europe, says Rodal. They had been allowed to come back if that they had kinfolk of buddies in Canada keen to sponsor them, and in the event that they handed the medical examination, says Rodal.
When a Toronto couple sponsored their two sons, each former members of the Waffen-SS, the Safety Panel cleared them as a result of the mother and father had been “reliable and respectable people,” and the West German authorities had requested Canadian Immigration officers in Germany to approve the visa requests and reunite the household in Toronto, says Rodal.
The director of immigration in Ottawa cabled the top of the Canadian Immigration Mission in Germany in regards to the approval of visas for the 2 brothers — “strictly secret information.”
Within the spring of 1950, the British needed Canada to absorb 8,500 Ukrainians as immigrants. British intelligence claimed the lads had been from the common German military — the Wehrmacht. However they had been the truth is Ukrainian SS troops who fled west to flee the Soviet Crimson Military, says Rodal.
The plan was delayed when Samuel Bronfman, head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, warned Ottawa it was about to permit a division of Waffen-SS into the nation.
The story of the Ukrainian-SS division shouldn’t be well-known in Canada, which is why a former member obtained two standing ovations in Parliament. Rodal is evident in her report — the SS didn’t should pressure folks in Soviet Ukraine to take up arms towards their Jewish neighbours or the Soviet Crimson Military.
“That members joined the division voluntarily is an established fact,” says Rodal. “The response to the call for volunteers was overwhelming.”
In response to German information cited by Rodal, 80,000 Ukrainian males volunteered for the SS, and 50,000 had been accepted. “The quota set for the unit was over-filled many times over,” says the Rodal report, “and tens of thousands of volunteers had to be rejected.”
By the summer time of 1943, the Nazi’s fashioned a brand new Ukrainian Division with 13,000 males. Lots of the different volunteers went into Nazi-organized police formations.
The Germans had been astonished, says Rodal, even after so many Ukrainians helped the cell Nazi loss of life squads — the Einsatzgruppen items that massacred 1.5 million folks, largely Jews in 1941 and 1942 in Soviet Ukraine, Jap Europe, and the Baltics.
The Ukrainian-SS Division fought towards the Crimson Military on the Battle of Brody in July 1943 and 10,000 Waffen-SS had been killed or captured, says Rodal. The Germans had no bother in re-filling the ranks with Nazi police formations and focus camp guards, says Rodal.
“It is likely that at least some persons who had served with Nazi sponsored Ukrainian police/militia units used in killing actions in 1941-1942 found their way into the ranks of the division either before or after the Battle of Brody,” says the Rodal report.
The Nazis known as it the 14th Galician Waffen Grenadier Division. It’s generally known as the Galician SS, the Ukrainian SS, the First Galician or the 14th Grenadiers. Completely different names for a similar unit. Ukrainian-SS members massacred folks in Delatyn, Nadvirna, Lawoczne, Obertyn and Kossów.
After the Battle of Brody, the Ukrainian-SS Division headed west and surrendered to the British. Lower than two weeks earlier than the tip of the conflict, the Ukrainian-SS was rebranded because the Ukrainian Military of Liberation, or the OUN. The British had been suspicious and saved 8,500 of them in prisoner of conflict camps for years, first in Italy after which within the U.Okay.
Once they had been lastly allowed to come back to Canada, the RCMP was presupposed to display screen them, however the Mounties relied on the British, who didn’t look too deeply into the backgrounds of the disciplined troops with no badges on their uniforms and no id papers of their pockets.
The outrage of the Canadian Jewish Congress slowed, however didn’t cease the immigration of the previous Ukrainian-SS members to Canada, says Rodal.
The worldwide embarrassment following the standing ovations for Hunka within the Home of Commons shouldn’t be the one time members of the Ukrainian-SS have given Canada a global black eye.
This monument within the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery in Oakville was eliminated in February 2024 after Library and Archives Canada launched a near-complete model of a authorities examine on Nazi conflict criminals in Canada. The image on the high of the monument, a lion surrounded by three crowns, was the official emblem of the Ukrainian SS.
Graham Paine/Torstar file picture
There’s a cenotaph in an Oakville cemetery topped with the image of the Ukrainian-SS, and the 200 or so grave monuments round it even have the image — a stylized silhouette of a lion, standing on its hind legs and encompass by three crowns. It’s a Nazi image banned in Germany.
St. Volodymyr’s Ukrainian Cemetery at 1280 Dundas St. W. in Oakville is on land owned by St. Volodymyr’s Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral on Bathurst Avenue in Toronto.
The place a conflict monument was eliminated at St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery in Oakville.
Mathew McCarthy Waterloo Area File
In Edmonton there’s a bust of Roman Shukhevych in entrance of a Ukrainian youth centre. Shukhevych was the commander of the Nachtigall Battalion, made up of 650 Ukrainian volunteers who perpetrated massacres of ethnic Poles in Galicia-Volhynia and Jews in Lviv.
Within the spring of 1951, once more by order-in-council, the blanket immigration ban on former SS and Waffen-SS members was relaxed and changed with a case-by-case method which centered on voluntary service versus compelled conscription, says Rodal.
A conflict monument at St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery in Oakville.
RCMP conflict crimes investigators discovered 15 members of the Ukrainian-SS had entered Canada earlier than the immigration guidelines had been relaxed, says Rodal.
In October 1955, the immigration restrictions put in place after the conflict had been utterly eliminated. Former members of the SS, the Waffen-SS and SA grew to become admissible to Canada, says Rodal.
That call was made by a subgroup of the Safety Panel, and it didn’t search the approval of the total Safety Panel or the federal cupboard, says Rodal. It was handled as an administrative process throughout the discretionary authority of the accountable minister, says Rodal.
At the moment the federal Minister of Immigration and Citizenship was Jack Pickersgill. Because the immigration restrictions for former members of the SS had been relaxed, he gave the alternative impression to a reporter.
In 1955 Pickersgill mentioned in interview he mentioned that German immigrants had been fastidiously screened for communist sympathies, or membership within the Nazi Social gathering and the SS.
“The best that can be said for this public stance is that it is untruthful,” says Rodal, including the federal government continued to suggest that mere membership within the SS or collaboration with the enemy was an absolute bar to getting into Canada.
The modifications had been saved quiet.
Thousands and thousands of Europeans had recent reminiscences of SS atrocities, and Canada didn’t need its lax immigration insurance policies for former SS members to turn into a public scandal amongst European allies, says Rodal.
