HOMEDISINFORMATIONPEOPLELITTMAN
Sol Littman
Letter 20
21-Oct-1999
Time to make amends?
You perpetrate the myth that the Deschênes Commission succeeded in discovering war criminals.
October 21, 1999
Sol Littman
Director, Simon Wiesenthal Center
8 King Street East, Suite 710
Toronto, ON
CANADA, M5C 1B5
Tel: (416) 864-9735
Fax: (416) 864-1083
Sol Littman:
In your letter to me dated 12Oct99, you perpetrate the myth that the Deschênes Commission succeeded in discovering war criminals:
Anyone of Ukrainian origin who has been charged before the Canadian courts with being a war criminal is there as a result of Deschênes' recommendation.
However, it appears to be the case that not a single Ukrainian has been prosecuted for war crimes. Rather, all have been prosecuted in civil court for half-century-old immigration infractions. The Deschênes Commission produced not a single war criminal of any nationality who could be convicted in criminal court of war crimes.
In fact, so vast is the discrepancy between promise and performance, between the vast funds expended and the zero criminals apprehended, that I wonder that you do not attempt to redeem your own shattered reputation, and that you do not attempt to clean up the image of your people which you have sullied, by reimbursing the Canadian taxpayer for the monies wasted on what turned out to be a wild goose chase. Your fund-raising skills would then be applied to the service of demonstrating your own, and Jewish, willingness to admit an error and to make amends for it instead of to the service of vexatious prosecution of septuagenarians and octogenarians for having, for example, lied half a century ago about their place of birth in order to avoid being repatriated to the Soviet Union and there being either executed or shipped to Siberia.