This Canadian controversy starts with one of the Second World War’s most notorious monsters: Josef Mengele, who earned the moniker Angel of Death by sending hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths at Auschwitz.
In 1985, the House of Commons heard that Mengele may have applied to immigrate to Canada in 1962 – and that the infamous Nazi might still be in Canada. There was talk of the possible presence of hundreds of “lower-echelon” Nazis, as a government summary put it: the unknown collaborators who had worked as concentration-camp guards or in death squads, often non-Germans, recruited in Nazi-occupied countries.
Prime minister Brian Mulroney wanted a full inquiry. “That’s many years ago and we’re having a thorough look,” said then-solicitor-general Elmer MacKay.
Retired Quebec judge Jules Deschênes, tasked with leading the inquiry, did have a thorough look. Many more years later, some Canadians and international scholars want to see what he found – all of it.
After a nearly two-year investigation, the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada submitted a 966-page report. It concluded that Mengele was not in Canada, nor did he ever apply to come here. The commission, which considered about 900 cases, recommended action be taken against 20 suspected Nazi war criminals living in Canada; cases against an additional 218 suspects required further investigation. Accusations against more than 600 were dismissed. (Several criminal prosecutions ensued; none were successful.)
The report stated that while the names included members of the Galicia Division – a Ukrainian division that was part of Germany’s Waffen SS – the members should not be indicted as a group; charges of war crimes against them had never been substantiated.
If the Galicia Division sounds familiar, let’s fast-forward to nearly a year ago, when Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian-Canadian described by the then-Speaker as a “hero,” received standing ovations in the House of Commons as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky paid a visit. Shortly afterward, news emerged that Mr. Hunka had served in the Waffen SS Galicia Division. If he was a war hero, it was for the wrong side.
This led to new calls to release the second part of the Deschênes report, still under wraps after decades, which includes the names of more than 600 people against whom accusations were dismissed – names not yet on the public record.
The Globe and Mail is one of three organizations that have filed access to information requests for part two of the report. Library and Archives Canada, as of Tuesday, is still “refining and concluding its analysis” in response to the ATI requests.
Part of the previously classified information, known as the Rodal Report, was released in February. It was, the news release stated, part of the government’s “ongoing commitment to transparency,” adding that a review was under way into the possible release of additional information, and engagement with affected communities was continuing.
But while those stakeholders included members of Canada’s Ukrainian community, others were not consulted, including leading historians and groups representing Holocaust survivors. These include the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, which has written to LAC expressing concerns about the omission of critical stakeholders and a “heavily biased set of findings” as a result.
As The Globe also reports, many stakeholders were concerned about the implications “of associating Ukrainian names with Nazis.” Now, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress is raising money for a possible court challenge to fight to keep the names secret, to protect “the good name of our community.” And as the Ottawa Citizen reported, some stakeholders are also concerned about new legal action – and that the list could embarrass Canada’s Ukrainian community.
New prosecutions? These men are mostly dead, or very old, and attempts at prosecutions decades ago were unsuccessful. But of all the arguments to keep the information secret, out of concern that the information could be used by Russia as propaganda, seems pretty flimsy. Bad actors torque information all the time. It is not a reason to keep it from the rest of us.
Alti Rodal, the director of historical research at the Deschênes commission, has called for the report’s release, with proper context. “They are allegations only, that were minimally investigated,” Ms. Rodal told The Globe. “They were not well researched, let alone proven in a court.”
Concerns that this will turn into a witch hunt, and that the Ukrainian-Canadian community could be vilified, are understandable. But give the public some credit. You don’t keep information secret because there are racists – and Russians – who will use it for nefarious purposes. Nobody will blame Canadian children and grandchildren of alleged Nazi collaborators. Nobody is going to blame the Ukrainians on the ground right now, getting bombed by Russia.
But in a vacuum, speculation breeds. Release the report as part of that continuing commitment to transparency and let’s get on with it. There are crises that urgently require attention. They include Russia’s catastrophic war in Ukraine.