Uncovering Canada’s Secret Report on Nazi War Criminals: Pursuing Justice Decades Later

 

For 37 years, Canada has held a closely guarded secret, a classified report containing the names of 883 possible Nazi war criminals who found refuge in the country after World War II, as was reported on Monday by the New York Times.  This report holds the potential to shed light on what the Canadian government knew about their arrival, the extent of their investigations, and why the majority of them escaped prosecution, the NYT report said. Canada’s stringent privacy laws and government secrecy have kept this report confidential, but a recent political blunder may lead to its disclosure.

The catalyst for this potential revelation was the recent controversial honoring of Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian Canadian man who had volunteered for the Nazi Waffen-SS, a combat group responsible for overseeing concentration camps during the Holocaust, according to the NYT report.  This incident occurred during a visit by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. In the aftermath, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is now considering whether it’s time to unseal the long-hidden report, the NYT said.

The discussions regarding the report’s declassification had already begun before the episode with Mr. Hunka. As was noted in the NYT report, Anthony Housefather, a member of Trudeau’s Liberal Party caucus and a strong advocate for declassification, had initiated the deliberations. However, the controversial honor bestowed upon Mr. Hunka amplified the pressure on the government to take action.

Justin Trudeau apologized for Mr. Hunka’s introduction as a “hero,” acknowledging the gravity of the situation. The Speaker of the House of Commons, Anthony Rota, resigned amidst the public outrage. According to the NYT report, in response to these events, Trudeau stated that “top public servants are looking very carefully” into releasing the classified list, adding, “We’re going to make recommendations.”

The reasons behind the secrecy of the report, the second part of a 1986 inquiry into war criminals in Canada, have never been fully clarified. The NYT report also said that some Ukrainian Canadians, whose communities included individuals with ties to former Nazis, vehemently opposed the inquiry, considering it a witch hunt and a smear campaign.

In contrast to Canada, the United States has declassified millions of pages of documents related to Nazi war crimes and their perpetrators under a special 1998 disclosure law, according to the NYT report. In Canada, Jewish groups and scholars have been advocating for the release of this report for decades.  (more...)

Uncovering Canada’s Secret Report on Nazi War Criminals: Pursuing Justice Decades Later