After WWII, thousands of war criminals were able to settle in Canada, where most lived openly without any fear of prosecution
Growing up, I always heard about the Nazi SS veteran who lived in our small town in rural Manitoba. His name was Herbie. He worked on farms in the area, and for a time at CN Rail, before passing away in peace and comfort in his 80s.
Herbie’s Nazi past was an open secret. Everybody in town knew he had fought for the Waffen-SS during the Second World War and hightailed it to Canada when the Allies triumphed. But nobody seemed to know how he had entered Canada so easily, or why the Canadian government didn’t do anything about this man whose Nazi past was known to everyone in the area.
Rumours circulated that Herbie was a war criminal. I remember hearing one story several times: while he was stationed at a concentration camp for Russian POWs on the Eastern Front, he shot and killed a prisoner simply because he wanted the man’s coat.
I was always confused why Herbie—an enemy combatant who had fought for what we supposedly recognize as one of the most vile and destructive regimes in history—was not arrested and extradited to Europe. Now I know why. It was a deliberate policy of Ottawa to welcome Nazi war veterans like Herbie into Canada after 1945.
The stereotype of Nazi-embracing Latin American dictatorships is a common one, but it distracts attention from the myriad ways in which the US and Canada welcomed thousands more Nazi veterans and allowed their ideology to fester, untouched, amongst many far-right diaspora groups.
In 1997, war crimes investigator and private detective Steven Rambam said, “Canada is where the Nazis are. Canada is the unknown haven for Nazis. Everybody knows about Argentina, but nobody knows about Canada.” (more...)
Canada’s Nazi war criminal past can no longer be ignored
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