I read with intrigue today that Quebec is home to someone who is ranked as highly as #4 on a very undesirable list: the Simon Wesenthal Center's most-wanted former Nazis. A stark contrast to that individual's current life in Ormstown, QC, where he quietly tends to his honeybees. He entered Canada after WWII, but it was determined by the Federal Court in 1999 that he lied to get in; denying having been a volunteer for the Germans during the war, in order to obtain Canadian citizenship. Furthermore, he was associated with a Ukraine battalion that was thought to be responsible for numerous atrocities there, which wiped out thousands of Jews over a three year period. Additionally, new evidence has appeared that he was a key participant in the vicious wiping out of an entire village, known as the Khatyn Massacre, in Belarus. The Canadian government overturned the revocation of his citizenship in 2007, but the new evidence seems set to re-open the discussion once more.
Of course, the key question here is: for how much longer is it legitimate to go Nazi-hunting, and what are courts supposed to do with a 91 year old individual in the last years of his (or her) life? One of the major problems, historically, has been the public voice of governments (including Canada) stating that they are dead against harboring of those associated with war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, but at the same time, an apparent lack of political will to actually see it through. It was one thing back in 1945, but it's 2012 people, shouldn't we be moving on? Naturally, the real problem here was the so-called "ratline" that allowed the monsters to escape Europe and head particularly to South America, where they were both welcomed and harbored. It is claimed that at that time, even here in Canada, that it was easier to get citizenship as a Nazi war criminal than it was as a Jewish refugee. The bottom line is that such types should never have seen another free day in their sick, miserable excuses for lives. But what to do with someone today, suspected of this or that, when memories have faded, evidence has evaporated and most witnesses are no longer with us?
It is a sensitive issue, not least for those who had relatives that were exposed to the atrocities of the Nazi regime, and who quite understandably never want to forget what happened. How do we assess someone's beliefs today, who might well have committed horrific things when, say, 25, but is now 90-plus years old and takes care of his bees? Can we assume that they have come full circle and realized how wrong they were, perhaps due to decades of being a tortured soul, agonizing over what one had been responsible for, and repenting and ultimately "cleansed" in the process? Or, do we stand before the 91 year old, look into his eyes, and see the brute they were at 25, and lock them up until death takes them?
For the sake of humanity, peace, the law, and being able to move on, I feel that where there is sufficient evidence to put them to trial, then we do so. The argument that "do you really think a 91 year old man is going to kill anyone now?" is simply not good enough. We do not let murderers in Canada slink off to a new country where they can rehabilitate themselves, denying any wrongdoing, and expecting mercy as it has been 20 years since. They are subject to the law and to the courts. This is little different. Where one committed atrocities against humanity, one needs to pay, at any later time.
The fact that so many of them were able to scuttle off the ship like the rats they were, into countries such as Canada, that pride themselves on human rights, immigration and freedom is where the problem lay and lies. Rather than face the music, they reverted to the cowardice that underlies all "bullying" to some extent, and ran into hiding. For sure, a quiet little life in rural Quebec would seem like heaven after WWII, especially if you had tortured and killed thousands of people whose right to that same peace you personally stole from them. - Kevin Mc
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