"... Canada's do-nothing policy about Nazis over the next 40 years was influenced by a persistent anti-Jewish bias within the federal bureaucracy. ... As war criminals were being let into Canada, their Jewish victims who barely survived the Nazi Holocaust were strenuously kept out. ..."As the nation honoured its war dead this week, some who gave their lives for freedom were still left with an ironic injustice. Though Canada played an outstanding role in the Allies' success in World War II, a number of Nazis who committed war crimes against Canadians fighting overseas were allowed later to immigrate here and remain unpunished.
The Canadian Armed Forces held post-war trials in Germany. But further prosecutions were to be handled by the British military. They were soon stopped. And Canada failed to bring to justice any of those accused against the Canadian military even when some were later found living here.
Historian Alti Rodal says this is part of "Canada's complicity in crimes against humanity."
Strong charges, especially since Rodal was chief historian for the 1986 Deschenes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals. She wrote a 580-page report on how Nazis were virtually welcomed into Canada and how successive governments ignored allegations of war criminals among them.
A federal government consultant, Rodal is currently writing a book based on her findings and new research - Other Priorities, to be published by Malcolm Lester Books.
Though Justice Jules Deschenes called for wide distribution of her report, Ottawa first buried it, then released it heavily censored. Even the bureaucrats must have been ashamed of its evidence of authorities caving in to pressure, of racist political decisions, and of investigators' incompetence. Other historians have since pursued the story. (more...)
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