Canada Cares More About Theoretical Nazis Than Real Ones (Part 1 of 2)
Canada’s Ongoing Reluctance to Investigate Nazi Collaborators
This newsletter is in two parts. This first essay is about the history of Canada’s reluctance to investigate and prosecute Nazi collaborators. Please see here for part II, which is largely about contemporary concerns regarding Nazism in Canada and the Ukraine.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, there was an explosion in Canadian media portraying Vladimir Putin as the Hitler of the 2020s. Canada, which has been led by the left-of-centre Liberal party for the past decade, purports to be led by the “anti-racist” party—the one more likely than the right-of-centre Conservatives to outwardly express concern about Nazism and white supremacy. Despite fear-mongering about theoretical Nazis, however, Canada has a history on both the right and left of being fairly disinterested in prosecuting, investigating, or even wanting to acknowledge actual Nazis that exist in reality.
After the 40s, when Nazis and Nazi collaborators initially fled Europe, there was no investigation into their presence in Canada until the Deschênes Commission of 1985. Both during and after the investigations, however, the country downplayed the possible threat, whitewashing and protecting potential Nazi collaborators. The Canadian government’s claim is that this was done out of sensitivity, to prioritize reducing tension between Canadian Jews and Eastern European Canadians, and to protect Ukrainians who had reportedly joined white nationalist groups to escape the Soviets. However, it has now become a consistent pattern for Canada to be a little too disinterested in acknowledging Nazi history in Ukraine, a disinterest that has resulted in the loss of thousands of lives.
This topic is dark, complicated, and depressing, particularly for innocent Jews and Ukrainians who inherit this history. Ukraine has an extremely tragic history that continues today, so I do want to note acknowledge here that innocent Ukrainian civilians do of course deserve massive empathy for both the horrors of the past and the present reality they endure.
That said, Canada’s silence on Ukrainian Nazism, and consistent attempts to portray any nuanced discussion on the subject as “Russian propaganda,” has ultimately been extremely harmful, particularly for Ukrainians themselves. This approach has interfered with Canadians’ ability to understand the war in Ukraine beyond our own propaganda, and interfered with our ability to understand exactly what it is we are funding in Ukraine. Given the huge amount of money we have sunk into this war, Canadians deserve to discuss this history without being condemned, particularly as we have also provided support to Israel during the genocide of Palestinians. Lack of transparency on the subject makes the Liberal party’s pontificating about “anti-racism” little more than posturing, as their actions suggest support of white supremacy abroad in more places than one.
As the Canadian election has begun, this is a topic that deserves some reflection before you cast your vote.
The Deschenes Commission (1985-1986)
In 1985, Sol Littman, “Nazi hunter” and Canadian representative for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, wrote a letter to the Canadian government claiming that he had obtained evidence that Josef Mengele, Nazi Germany’s notorious “Angel of Death,” had applied for a landed immigrant visa to Canada in 1962 under the name Joseph Menke. In response, the Deschênes Commission, headed by retired Quebec judge Jules Deschênes, was established to investigate claims that Canada had become a safe haven for Nazi war criminals fleeing Europe. The commission ultimately concluded that these claims were mostly “grossly exaggerated” and that Mengele had not come to Canada, however, they also confirmed that yes, we did have Nazi collaborators come here after the Holocaust, and no, the government would not tell us who they were.
The Commission was known for being a bit of a shitshow. It reportedly created tension between Jewish and Eastern European immigrant communities, and the investigations themselves were marked by indicators that suggested that the government’s priority was to reduce tension between communities and speed through the process for optics reasons, rather than focusing thoroughly on identifying and prosecuting the Nazis and Nazi collaborators.
Quite a lot of potential evidence, for example, was not even considered by the commission. Due to the climate of the First Cold War, the Commission ignored all evidence kept in the Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc countries, despite the fact that the majority of Nazi collaborators would have operated within these countries. This evidence appears to have been rejected largely due to anti-Soviet Ukrainian lobbying groups, who claimed that Ukrainian membership in neo-Nazi groups did not necessarily demonstrate evidence of war crimes, as some Ukrainians had reportedly joined these groups to escape Soviets who were conducting the Holodomor. Due to this history, evidence from Soviets was framed as untrustworthy, and so was not collected or evaluated.
Though anti-Soviet sentiment may have been understandable for the era, the result was cases like Michael Pawlowski’s, who was charged in 1989 with eight counts of murder dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Pawlowski was accused of killing about 410 Jews and 80 non-Jewish Poles in the Soviet Republic of Byelorussia in the summer of 1942, however, two judges refused to allow the prosecution to send a judicial commission to the Soviet Union to collect evidence. This was appealed to the Supreme Court, but they without providing a reason refused to entertain the appeal in 1992. Since witnesses from the Soviet Union did not want to come to Canada to testify, the Crown not only dropped the charges against Pawlowski, but also had to contribute to his legal costs.
Framing the concern of Nazi war criminals hiding in Canada as “grossly exaggerated” thus means nothing given so much evidence was discarded. Even when the Soviet Union agreed to Canada’s strict terms of the Commission in 1986 (allowing Canada to basically grill witnesses in the USSR), Deschênes said they were too late.
This was because the commission’s investigations were rushed, lasting only from February 1985 to December 1986. Deschênes did not have a large team, and he was assessing decades worth of information regarding hundreds of potential war criminals. The reasons for the short time frame remains somewhat unclear. The tense social and geopolitical environment is cited as having affected the proceedings, however, one of the major reasons for the rush also appeared to be out of oversensitivity to the anti-Soviet Ukrainian-Canadian lobbying groups.
This is the most complex concern wrapped up in this subject, but it is also the one most relevant to modern day Canadian foreign policy in Ukraine. As Soviets as well as Nazis were engaging in violence towards Ukrainians during the Holocaust, an organization called the Civil Liberties Commission, created by the Ukrainian Canadian Committee and other European/Baltic community organizations, lobbied the Deschênes Commission to “take a stand against the defamation of Ukrainians,” “show that membership in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Ukrainian 1st division [was] not proof of war crimes” and to “prevent the use of Soviet evidence in the commission and Canadian courts.”
These groups thus argued that the Commission was a witch hunt. Their position was that Ukrainians had joined these nationalist organizations primarily to fight the Soviets, advising some had only joined German military units like the Galicia Division and Waffen-SS Galizien to resist Stalin, and not out of identifying with Nazi ideology. They thus argued that the Commission was a smear attempt by the USSR, who were attempting to falsely equate anti-Soviet Ukrainians with Nazis to discredit Ukrainian independence movements.
The rushed nature of the Commission and dismissal of Soviet evidence however indicates that the arguments of the Ukrainian lobbying groups were given more weight than the argument that prosecution of Nazi war criminals was vital and important. While not all Ukrainians who joined Ukrainian nationalist units may have participated in war crimes, these units did in fact participate in crimes. Whether one initially joined the Galicia Division to defeat the Soviets or not, members of the division are still linked to war crimes such as the 1944 Huta Pieniacka massacre. The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police also helped Nazis round up Jews during events like the pogroms of 1941, while the OUN-B (the Bandera faction) engaged in ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia from 1943-44. Even if a Ukrainian was initially moved to join one of these groups to fight the USSR, if they committed war crimes during that process, that still remains a crime against humanity.
Overall, the Commission only charged four men on allegations of participation in Holocaust war crimes. But the Commission received quite a bit of criticism, and its weakness means that is highly likely there were many more Nazi collaborators who escaped to Canada without punishment or investigation.
Whitewashing Ukrainian Nazis From Trudeau Sr to Jr
The policy of tiptoeing around the subject of Ukrainian collaborators in Nazi activity to prioritize the opinions similar to those of the Ukrainian lobbying groups in 1985 has remained more or less consistent in Canadian foreign policy since the 60s. Historian Alti Rodal released a report last February that advised that Pierre Trudeau, who was Prime Minister from 1968 to 1979 and later 1980 to 1984, was “reluctant to prosecute alleged war criminals over the objections of cabinet ministers,” which included Minister of Justice Jean Chrétien, who became Prime Minister from 1993 to 2003. Similar to what was discussed above, the cabinet reportedly didn’t want to piss off Ukrainian, Latvian, and Eastern European communities that had fled Soviet control and might have had involvement with Nazi collaborators. They claimed this was because these communities had already suffered under the Soviet Union, but again, this means that their argument was prioritized over the prosecution of war criminals.
Rodal for instance found in her report that Trudeau Senior did not want to deport a suspect who had been sentenced in absentia in Russia for being the commander of a firing squad that killed 5,218 Jews in Latvia. He claimed that “false disclosure about a Nazi past at the time of immigration was not grounds for deportation.” A project by 60 minutes also indicated that 1000 Nazi SS veterans from Baltic states had been granted citizenship by Canada after the war, but clearly 1000 people were not prosecuted for war crimes.
Canada’s policy of favouring one opinion over the other has created a climate where discussing, assessing, or even acknowledging the history of Nazism in Ukraine is framed as “Russian misinformation.” In November of last year, the Government of Canada announced it would not release the portion of a report produced by the Deschênes Commission that named 900 Canadians accused of war crimes committed on behalf of the Nazis. Global Affairs Canada reportedly prevented Library and Archives Canada from granting access to these names. Their excuse was to accuse Putin of “misinformation to justify his invasion of Ukraine,” which has also been the consistent tactic of the Canadian Liberal government when discussing the topic of neo-Nazis in the Russo-Ukrainian war. They accuse Russia generally of spreading “misinformation” on the topic without providing evidence or a counter-argument to demonstrate what exactly is the misinformation, and what is the proof that it is indeed misinformation. And any evidence they do provide tends to come from assessments of Western-funded think-tanks or “fact checkers,” which are obviously not neutral parties.
As well, as Library Archives Canada prepared for the possible release of the commission’s classified annexes, they only consulted with representatives of the Ukrainian community, and not Holocaust survivors or scholars interested in prosecuting Nazi war criminals.
Thus the pattern remains consistent of favouring one position over the other. So is this really out of sensitivity to Ukrainians who suffered under the Soviets? Or is there some other reason they’re so disinterested in holding Nazi collaborators accountable?
I will discuss why this is important to our contemporary situation in part 2 of this essay.
Articles to read:
Ukraine guilty of human rights violations in trade union massacre, top European court finds by Kit Klarenburg
Let’s Be Honest: There Will Be No Ceasefire In Ukraine and Nazis in Ukraine — It’s Worse Than You Think by Euroyankee
Trump Supporters Can No Longer Say Trump Never Started A War and Thoughts On The Trump Team's Signal Chat About Bombing Yemen by Caitlin Johnstone
Negotiating the End to the Cold War & Instigating a New Cold War by Glenn Diesen
Israel attacked ambulance crews and fire fighters and buried the vehicles and bodies and The IDF has just decapitated another Palestinian child by Ricky Hale and Council Estate Media
MUST SEE: State Dept Pressed on Israeli Nukes, JFK Assassination by Decensored News
Interview with Jim Clancy -- and CNN's Cleansing of Israel Critics by Sam Husseini
US VP JD Vance admits West wants Global South trapped at bottom of value chain by Ben Norton