Will Canada deport it's last known Nazi?

Helmut Oberlander (right), his wife, Margret (left), and daughter, Irene Rooney (centre behind) leave a courthouse in Kitchener on Nov. 4, 2003. (The Canadian Press)

Former Nazi death squad member Helmut Oberlander has exhausted every possible appeal in this country to obstruct and delay his deportation — two decades worth of legal filings at every level of Canada’s judiciary.

In December, the highest court in the land refused to hear his appeal. Case closed. Auf Wiedersehen, at last.

Or so we mistakenly assumed. But this is Canada, of course. The 96-year-old retired Kitchener real estate developer should have been immediately handed a one-way ticket. Instead, two months later, and Oberlander not only remains here but he has yet another ongoing legal challenge delaying his departure.

According to his lawyer Ronald Poulton, the case is now before the Immigration Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board as the government tries to obtain a deportation order.

“We are arguing that they do not have jurisdiction to issue such an order as Mr. Oberlander never lost Canadian domicile, a status which he and others acquired at the time he entered Canada and which makes deportation on the allegations presently made by the government, not possible,” Poulton told the Toronto Sun.

And how long will that take? He has no idea. “It is up to the minister and the board.”

Born in 1924 to an ethnic German family in Halbstadt, Ukraine, Oberlander was 17 when he began working as an interrogation interpreter for Einsatzkommando 10a, known as Ek10a, one of the mobile mass killing units used by the Nazi SS for the execution of more than 2 million people (primarily Jewish) who were considered unacceptable to Nazi Germany.

While he served from 1941 to 1943, his particular unit was responsible for the murder of an estimated 91,000 people.

Granted German citizenship in 1944, Oberlander applied to come to Canada in 1952. Not surprisingly, he kept his wartime activities to himself during his immigration interview.

His shameful secret remained buried until 1995 when the RCMP began investigating his involvement in war crimes.

Canada has been trying to get rid of him ever since.

Oberlander has always maintained he was conscripted and would have been executed if he tried to leave. He insisted he never participated in any atrocities.

In 2000, the Federal Court ruled Oberlander lied about his wartime activities to gain citizenship and that he knew about the unit’s brutality and was complicit in its war crimes by acting as an interpreter.

Three times — in 2001, 2007 and 2012 — the federal cabinet tried to strip Oberlander of his citizenship only to have their decision set aside by the Federal Court of Appeal.

In 2017, the governor-in-council revoked Oberlander’s citizenship for a fourth time on grounds he was complicit in crimes against humanity, “having made a voluntary, knowing and significant contribution to the crimes committed by Ek10a.”

“Given Ek10a’s unique nature, there was no other purpose to interpretation during interrogation other than to fulfill the group’s deadly mandate,” the Federal Court would determine in 2018.

An application for judicial review was dismissed and in 2019, the Federal Court of Appeal closed his file. The Supreme Court decided in December not to hear his appeal.

So why is Oberlander still here?

Taken from: https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/mandel-enough-is-enough-deport-canadas-last-known-nazi