Paul Martin   Letter 07   27-Apr-2004   Irwin Cotler Leadership in the Deschenes Commission Witch Hunt
"The only allegation initially made was that the subject was a war criminal because he was so wealthy and of German background." — Jules Deschenes
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27-Apr-2004

The Right Honourable Paul Martin
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON    K1A 0A2


Mr Prime Minister:


The main purpose of the instant letter is to bring to your attention that Irwin Cotler's participation in the Deschenes Commission provides a further reason why he is unfit to serve as Canada's Minister of Justice, to explain which necessitates a review of the nature of that Commission.

Application of the word "hoax" to the misdeeds of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) signifies in the instant letter either that the CJC knew that its statements were false, or else that it could easily have known, and therefore should have known, and that any person exercising average caution would have known, that its statements were false.

The Deschenes Commission Was Created In Response To Two Hoaxes

The Deschenes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals was the Canadian government's response to two hoaxes, in which the Canadian Jewish Congress, and particularly its General Counsel, Irwin Cotler, are deeply implicated; namely (1) Sol Littman's Mengele-Tried-to-Enter-Canada Hoax and (2) Simon Wiesenthal's Canada-Is-A-Sanctuary-For-Thousands-Of-War-Criminals Hoax.  That these two hoaxes prompted the creation of the Deschenes Commission is evidenced by the minute of Order No. 1985-348 of the Privy Council of Canada which set up the Commission opening with the words:

WHEREAS concern has been expressed about the possibility that Joseph Mengele, an alleged Nazi war criminal, may have entered or attempted to enter Canada;

WHEREAS there is also concern that other persons responsible for war crimes related to the activities of Nazi Germany during World War II (hereinafter referred to as war criminals) are currently resident in Canada;  [...].
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 17.

In further confirmation that the Mengele and Nazi-Sanctuary Hoaxes provided the rationale for the creation of the Deschenes Commission is the following Commission Report acknowledgment:

Over the years various sources, more or less closely related to the matter at hand, have thrown out for public consumption figures allegedly representing the number of war criminals who had found refuge in Canada.  The high level reached by some of those figures, together with the wide discrepancy between them, contributed to create both revulsion and interrogation.  The sensational allegations concerning Dr. Mengele's connection with Canada were the straw that broke the camel's back: the matter had to be clarified once and for all.

This Commission of Inquiry was entrusted with the task, which it was required to perform within a mercilessly short time frame.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 245

And a Library of Parliament summary of the Deschenes Commission and its sequelae underlines that the immediate cause of the establishment of the Deschenes Commission was the Mengele Hoax:

The immediate cause of the establishment of the Deschênes Commission in 1985 was the accusation that Joseph Mengele, an infamous Nazi war criminal, had applied to immigrate to Canada in 1962 and that Canadian government officials had been informed at the time of his identity. Moreover, it was suggested that he might still be in Canada. The issue was raised in the House of Commons on 23 January 1985 by Robert Kaplan. The Prime Minister responded that he had instructed the Minister of Justice and the Solicitor General to initiate, on an urgent basis, a full inquiry to ascertain whether there was any truth in the accusations.
Grant Purves, War Criminals: The Deschênes Commission, Library of Parliament, Parliamentary Research Branch, Political and Social Affairs Division, Revised 16-Oct-1998  www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/873-e.htm#E.%20The%20Report-t

The two founding hoaxes can be outlined as follows.

Sol Littman's Mengele-Tried-to-Enter-Canada Hoax

On 20-Dec-1984, Sol Littman wrote to the Prime Minister of Canada unequivocally affirming that Dr Joseph Mengele had tried to enter Canada in 1962; furthermore, Sol Littman forwarded his allegation to Ralph Blumenthal who published it in the New York Times.  Thus, the allegation received wide publicity and generated a "public outcry" [p. 67].  However, the Commission found that Sol Littman's allegation was fraudulent:

[T]he Commission must say that it takes a dim view of the attitude of Mr. Littman.  [...]

This is a case where not a shred of evidence has been tendered to support Mr. Littman's statement to the Prime Minister of Canada on 20 December 1984, or Mr. Ralph Blumenthal's article in the New York Times on 23 January 1985.

Indeed Mr. Littman has stated before the Commission:

Well, let me put it this way.  We have accepted the fact that Mengele did not come to Canada and, in all likelihood, never applied to come over to Canada.  We had no difficulty accepting that.

The Commission accordingly FINDS without the slightest hesitation that:

8 —  Dr. Joseph (Josef) Mengele did not apply in Buenos Aires in 1962 for a visa to enter Canada, either under his own name or under any of his several known aliases.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, pp. 80-82

And it is not the case merely that Sol Littman had some reason to believe that Josef Mengele had tried to enter Canada, but turned out to be wrong; but it is the case that Sol Littman never had any reason for his belief:

Littman was, therefore, put on notice that, in view of the paucity of available information, it was dangerous to make the assumptions with which he was playing.  [...]

There is no documentary evidence whatsoever of an attempt by Dr. Joseph Mengele to seek admission to Canada from Buenos Aires in 1962.

The affirmation [that Mengele tried to enter Canada] has come from Mr. Sol Littman, and from him alone.  [...]

The advice which Littman solicited (whether it were from one or two people) did not support his assumptions, but put him on notice about their fragility.

As stated at the outset, all that Littman could rely on was "speculation, impression, possibility, hypothesis".  Yet he chose to transmute them into statements of facts which he publicized, with the results that are now known.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, pp. 81-82

My 25-Sep-1999 letter to Sol Littman proposes that society has an interest in discouraging misconduct as damaging as the Mengele Hoax, either through criminal prosecution (as perhaps under the Public Mischief law) or through psychiatric intervention (as perhaps following the diagnosis of Querulous Paranoia)  www.ukar.org/littma05.html#interventions.


Simon Wiesenthal's Canada-Is-A-Sanctuary-For-Thousands-Of-War-Criminals Hoax

The Commission found that Simon Wiesenthal, the second author of the Deschenes Commission, was a second fraud:

Between 1971 and 1986, public statements by outside interveners concerning alleged war criminals residing in Canada have spread increasingly large and grossly exaggerated figures as to their estimated number [..., among them] the figure of 6,000 ventured in 1986 by Mr. Simon Wiesenthal [...].
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 249

The Commission has ascertained from the New York Daily News that this figure is correct and is not the result of a printing error.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 247.  The meaning of "figure is correct" is that the newspaper is satisfied that Simon Wiesenthal really intended that figure.

The high level reached by some of those figures, together with the wide discrepancy between them, contributed to create both revulsion and interrogation.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 245

Generally, however, it must be stated that the [Wiesenthal Documentation] Center's information was long on allegations and generalities, and short on evidence and specifics.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 58

It is obvious that the list of 217 officers of the Galicia Division furnished by Mr. Wiesenthal was nearly totally useless and put the Canadian government, through the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] and this Commission, to a considerable amount of purposeless work.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 258

[T]he Commission has tried repeatedly to obtain the incriminating evidence allegedly in Mr. Wiesenthal's possession, through various oral and written communications with Mr. Wiesenthal himself and with his solicitor, Mr. Martin Mendelsohn of Washington, D.C., but to no avail: telephone calls, letters, even a meeting in New York between Mr. Wiesenthal and Commission Counsel on 1 November 1985 followed up by further direct communications, have succeeded in bringing no positive results, outside of promises.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 257

The Deschenes Commission Flouted the Canadian Charter Guarantee of Equality Before the Law

The Commission's definition of "war criminals" was in violation of the Canadian Charter § 15(1) guarantee of equality before the law because it selected for investigation, and thus tagged for eventual prosecution, individuals having a particular ethnicity, nationality, and religion.

Specifically, the Commission's definition of "war criminals" was as follows:

All persons, whatever their past and present nationality, currently resident in Canada and allegedly responsible for crimes against peace, war crimes or crimes against humanity related to the activities of Nazi Germany and committed between 1 September 1939 and 9 May 1945, both dates inclusive.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 3.

The Commission's definition, then, excluded WW II crimes committed over the same interval by, among others, Russia, Italy, America, Japan, and Canada, which exclusion constitutes discrimination on the basis of nationality.

The Commission definition also excluded crimes committed just prior to the interval specified, and just after, most notably such crimes as the Russian implementation of the 1932-33 Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor), and the American-French abuse and murder of German civilians and German POWs immediately after the war, and the Allied forced repatriation of mainly Ukrainian and Russian POWs and refugees into Soviet hands where they faced near-certain deportation or execution.  Most noteworthy is that the Commission definition excluded more recent, and even contemporary, war crimes, such as those committed by Israelis against Palestinians, beginning in earnest around 1948 and extending through the duration of the Committee proceedings.  Thus, what may at first glance appear to be discrimination on the basis of calendar date, and which might be expected to impact all groups equally, in effect was equivalent to selecting certain nationalities for investigation while excluding others.

Most inexcusably excluded from consideration were war crimes that did fall squarely within the Commission mandate — that is, crimes that were committed on behalf of Nazi Germany, and between 01-Sep-1939 and 09-May-1945, and — to satisfy an unstated but de facto Commission requirement — that were committed against Jews.  These were the crimes of Jews themselves, the Jews of the Judenrat (Jewish Council for the implementation of Nazi programs), and of the Ordnungsdienst (Jewish Ghetto Police), and the Jews who constituted the collaborators and Kapos of the Nazi camps.  Being handed a discriminatory and Charter-violating mandate should have been the occasion of Commissioner Deschenes, and all senior Commission personnel, turning their backs and walking away from work that was unconscionable; it should not have been the occasion of Commissioner Deschenes imposing further Charter-violating discrimination on his own initiative, which is what he did by investigating zero Jews and hundreds of Ukrainians — which was Charter-violating because Jews collaborated with the Nazis on a larger scale than Ukrainians did, as has been outlined in my letters to you of 10-Mar-2004 What kind of Justice Minister have you appointed? www.ukar.org/martin01.html, and of 16-Mar-2004 Still more Jewish war crimes www.ukar.org/martin04.html.

The Commission could also have complied with its mandate without imposing its own further Charter-violating discrimination by investigating Soviet war crimes that followed from the 19-Aug-1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, especially from its Secret Protocol which gave Western Poland to Germany, and Eastern Poland along with Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to the Kremlin.  Investigating Kremlin crimes of this era, then, would have been investigating crimes planned in collaboration with Nazi Germany, and crimes coordinated with those of Nazi Germany — and therefore "crimes related to the activities of Nazi Germany," as specified in the Commission mandate.  Had the Order-in-Council wished the Commission to restrict its attention solely to crimes committed by Nazi Germany, then it could have said so using the briefer and unequivocal "crimes committed by Nazi Germany."  Why would the Order-in-Council adopt the wordier and broader "related to the activities of" if it had meant only the narrower "committed by" unless it did indeed wish to convey something broader than "committed by," and in fact something less discriminatory and less Charter-violating?  On this question, the Commission glanced at the proposal that it investigate Soviet war crimes in addition to Nazi war crimes, and rejected it out of hand:

The Canadian government has decided to direct a searchlight on "war crimes related to the activities of Nazi Germany... — crimes commis dans le cadre des activités de l'Allemagne nazie...".  It does not belong to this Commission to pass judgment on the wisdom of this decision or on its "moral validity"; nor should the Commission extend its mandate beyond the borders of its obvious meaning.  It is true, as a prominent Member of Parliament has put it, that "... during the period 1939-1941 (...) the Soviet government was in effect a partner of the Third Reich".  Yet crimes, if any, committed by the Soviet forces can, by no stretch of imagination, be classified under the heading "crimes related to the activities of Nazi Germany".

The Commission accordingly finds against such an extended construction of its mandate and must keep to its clearly stated terms of reference: Nazi Germany.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 38.  Among the footnotes omitted here can be discovered that the statement attributed to a "prominent Member of Parliament" was from an 18-Sep-1985 submission of Mr. David Kilgour, M.P. for Edmonton Strathcona.

However, a more reasonable view is that the Commission including investigation of the crimes of the Kremlin would have been complying with its mandate to investigate "war crimes related to the activities of Nazi Germany," whereas excluding the crimes of the Kremlin amounted to restricting Commission attention to the narrower and non-mandate "war crimes committed by Nazi Germany."  In the last two words of the block quote above, Commission Deschenes imagines that affirming a stark and unqualified "Nazi Germany" somehow serves to inform him, and should convince others, that "crimes committed by Nazi Germany" was the Commission mandate, and not "crimes related to the activities of Nazi Germany," which is patently gratuitous and glamorously false.  "Nazi Germany" never appeared in the mandate as two unqualified words bearing some unequivocal meaning, and Commissioner Deschenes affirming that "Nazi Germany" stripped of its mandate context decides the question is sophistry.

And by the same argument must be included within the Commission mandate to investigate crimes "related to the activities of Nazi Germany" the crimes of Italy and Japan who were allied with Germany by means of the Anti-Comintern Pact of 25-Nov-1936, the Rome Protocol of 06-Nov-1937, and the Tripartite Pact of 27-Sep-1940.  Germany, Italy, and Japan acted in unison as the Axis, and thus everything that Italy and Japan did was "related to" what Germany did.  Excluding investigation of Italian and Japanese war crimes was also in violation of the Commission mandate, and was also discriminatory under Canadian Charter § 15(1) guarantee of equality before the law, because Ukrainians, Germans, and Lithuanians would be investigated by the Commission, whereas Italians and Japanese would not.

On this question, Commissioner Deschenes blinded himself to what was happening around him, and hypnotized himself into conformity with Canadian Jewish Congress goals, by supposing that what he wanted to be true really was true, when any child capable of crying out "The Emperor has no clothes!" would have been able to tell him that it was false:

The Commission has not been created to indict one or several particular groups of Canadians.  The Commissioner stated in the clearest way in Winnipeg:
Let me say bluntly that this Commission has not been set up in order to start the Second World War all over again.  Therefore, the Commission is not sitting here, nor has it been sitting and will it be sitting elsewhere, to stir unkind feelings among various groups of people in this country.  This Commission is not directed at any group of people of any ethnic origin whatsoever, and it is not, therefore, to be used as a kind of platform where old wounds would be re-opened.

The purpose of this Commission, as you know from the Order in Council, is to find out if undesirable individuals, otherwise called war criminals, have slipped into this country and, if so, to advise the government as to how they should be dealt with.  There should be, therefore, no fear that, through the process of this Commission, any number of people, large or small, be smeared as a group.  The Commission is geared otherwise and shall protect groups, as it has announced it would protect individuals.
[...]

The Commission has not been created to revive old hatred that once existed abroad between communities which should now live in peace in Canada;

The Commission is only interested in individuals, of whatever ethnic origin, who may be seriously suspected of war crimes.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 254.

The above words of Commissioner Jules Deschenes call to mind that the leading prerequisite for high public office is the ability to utter falsehoods with a straight face.  In fact, everything that Commissioner Deschenes says is palpably false.  The Commission was obviously stirring unkind feelings among various groups.  The Commission was obviously directed by Jewish leaders against non-Jews.  Jewish leaders did use the Commission as a platform to re-open old wounds.  The work of the Commission was obviously smearing groups that should have been protected.  The Commission was reviving old hatreds and making it impossible for communities to live in peace.  The Commission was not "only interested in individuals of whatever ethnic group," its interest evaporated when it came to individuals of the Jewish ethnic group.  In short, the Commission reinforced Jewish de facto immunity from investigation for war criminality, and presented Jewish leaders with a stage from which they could launch irresponsible condemnations of war criminality upon others wholesale.  As all these things were evidently happening, and could have been predicted to happen at the outset, Commissioner Deschenes must be construed as having intended them to happen, which is not to say that he wanted them to happen, but only that he proceeded despite full awareness that they would happen and that they were happening.

Galicia-Division-Soldiers-Were-War-Criminals Hoax

Once the Deschenes Commission was created and operating, the next chief hoax that Irwin Cotler and the Canadian Jewish Congress, together with sister organizations, attempted to promulgate was the hoax that the members of the Ukrainian Galicia Division were war criminals.

The origins of this Canadian Jewish Congress delusion can be traced to then President of the Canadian Jewish Congress Samuel Bronfman opposing Galicia Division entry into Canada in 1950, and which opposition the government brushed aside:

On 25 September 1950, the President of the C.J.C., Mr. Samuel Bronfman, replied at great length to the Minister.  His was an overall attack:

That each individual who was a member of the Halychina Division ought to be stamped with the stigmata that is attached to the entire body of the SS.
This call, however, went unheeded: on the very same day, the ban was lifted and both Immigration and External Affairs advised their London offices accordingly, reinstating generally the terms and conditions of Directive Number 26 of 15 June 1950 which had opened the door to Ukrainian immigrants from the United Kingdom.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 253.  Footnotes removed.

The Canadian dismissal of the Bronfman accusation was not gratuitous — the Canadian Jewish Congress had even in 1950 begun its tradition, proudly flaunted still, of wild claims backed by slovenly preparation of inadequate evidence:

The C.J.C. then furnished the department with two sworn statements (one of which was bearing on events posterior to the hostilities) as well as, at an indeterminate date, a list of 94 suspects from the Galicia Division.  Unfortunately, no witnesses were offered in support of the allegations, and in exactly half the cases not even a first name was given to help identify the suspects (the transliteration of names from the Cyrillic to the Roman alphabet rendered the situation still more treacherous).
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 251.

In opposition to the Bronfman-CJC slovenly preparation and absence of substantiation, the Deschenes Commission found a series of investigations of the Galicia Division whose unanimous conclusions tended in the following direction:

The Galicia Division was a Ukrainian combat unit of the Waffen-SS, which had not participated in the camp management activities of the pure-German SS.  No Ukrainian ever wore the thunderbolt SS insignia, nor the skull and crossbones, that were standard issue for the SS proper.  The Ukrainian motivation for permitting the formation of the Galicia Division combat unit was threefold:
  1. the existence of the division would serve to improve German treatment of Ukrainians in the occupied territories,
  2. the Division would form the nucleus of a national army which might promote Ukrainian aspirations to statehood, and
  3. the Division would be thrown into the fight to oppose the Soviet re-occupation of Ukraine.
Even though both Canada and the U.S. have Nazi-hunting units within their respective Justice Departments, not a single member of the Division has ever been convicted of any war crime and none has ever been charged.  The absence of evidence of any wrongdoing not only of the Division as a whole, but also of any member of the Division, during his membership in the Division or before or after, is widely recognized.  Commissioner Jules Deschenes concluded that:

The members of the Galicia Division were individually screened for security purposes before admission to Canada.  Charges of war crimes against members of the Galicia Division have never been substantiated, neither in 1950 when they were first preferred, nor in 1984 when they were renewed, nor before this Commission.  Further, in the absence of evidence of participation in or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia Division is insufficient to justify prosecution.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 12.

Commissioner Deschenes cites a 1947 report of a British Screening Commission which was filed just prior to the Galicia Division being moved from Italy to Britain (note that these are the words of the 1947 British Screening Commission, not of Commissioner Deschenes):

They probably were not, and certainly do not now seem to be at heart pro-German, and the fact that they did give aid and comfort to the Germans can fairly be considered to have been incidental and not fundamental.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 253.

A 1950 British Foreign Office report to the Canadian Department of External Affairs concerning the Galicia Division was also cited by Commissioner Deschenes (note that these are the words of the 1950 British Foreign Office, not of Commissioner Deschenes):

While in Italy these men were screened by Soviet and British missions and neither then nor subsequently has any evidence been brought to light which would suggest that any of them fought against the Western Allies or engaged in crimes against humanity.  Their behaviour since they came to this country has been good and they have never indicated in any way that they are infected with any trace of Nazi ideology.  [...]  From the reports of the special mission set up by the War Office to screen these men, it seems clear that they volunteered to fight against the Red Army from nationalistic motives which were given greater impetus by the behaviour of the Soviet authorities during their earlier occupation of the Western Ukraine after the Nazi-Soviet Pact.  Although Communist propaganda has constantly attempted to depict these, like so many other refugees, as "quislings" and "war criminals" it is interesting to note that no specific charges of war crimes have been made by the Soviet or any other Government against any members of this group.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 252.

Commissioner Deschenes concludes:

It is an acknowledged fact that the members of the Division were volunteers who had enlisted in the spring and summer of 1943, essentially to combat the "Bolsheviks"; indeed, they were never used against Western allies.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 255.

One may add that neither could there be found any immigration infraction that might justify attempts to denaturalize or deport:

Finally, this is not a case for denaturalization and deportation.  The members of the Galicia Division have never hidden their membership in the Division, nor indeed could they.  Canadian authorities were fully aware, in 1950, of the history of the Division.  When they gave the green light to the admission of its members, they knew where these members came from and what they had been through.  There was, therefore, neither false representation, nor fraud, nor concealment of material circumstances: admission to Canada and subsequently, citizenship, were not tainted with any irregularity.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 260.

For these many reasons, the Commission disposed of every denunciation which was based on the denounced being only a member of the Galicia Division with a recommendation that his file be closed, often employing such words as the following:

On the basis of the foregoing, no evidence of participation in or knowledge of specific war crimes beyond membership in the Galicia Division is available against the subject.  Without such evidence, mere membership in the Galicia Division is insufficient to establish a prima facie case for the Commission's purposes, as discussed in chapter I-8 of this Report (see finding no. 59).

"Finding no. 59" was simply:

Further, in the absence of evidence of participation in or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia Division is insufficient to justify prosecution.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 261.

In short, the Samuel Bronfman fury at the Galicia Division was unfounded, the Simon Wiesenthal submission of the names of the members of the Galicia Division, which everyone already knew, was useless, the Irwin Cotler and Canadian Jewish Congress reliance on Galicia Division numbers to inflate their estimates of the number of war criminals in Canada was misleading.


 The Soviets Supply Trustworthy Evidence Hoax

From the non-Jewish side came no objection to collecting evidence from European countries that were Western democracies:

No problem arose with the possibility of collecting evidence in western democracies, but a great debate ensued in connection with evidence available in Eastern bloc countries.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 263.

This is the question to which the parties devoted the bulk of their energies.  But even those who were less than enthusiastic agreed that a distinction ought to be made between evidence available in Western countries and that available in Eastern bloc countries: no objection was raised against the former; only the latter was objected to.  By way of example, Mr. Botiuk stated:
My clients, consequently, Mr. Commissioner, have no objection to this Commission going to to such countries as the Netherlands, the U.S.A. or the United Kingdom.  It is my respectful submission, however, that no useful purpose can be served and, indeed, only harm can result from this Commission collecting evidence in the East Bloc countries.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, pp. 876-877.  "to to" is in the original.

Reasons for distrusting East Bloc evidence have been reviewed on UKAR:

27-Apr-1986    Robert Gillette: Did Soviets manufacture evidence?   www.ukar.org/gillet01.htm
27-Apr-1986    Robert Gillette: Impossible to treat them worse www.ukar.org/gillet02.htm
28-Apr-1986    Robert Gillette: The main witness was a joke www.ukar.org/gillet03
August 1986    Shimon Peres: Israel solicits Soviet evidence www.ukar.org/peres01.html
19-Dec-1997    Anne McLellan: A bomb exploded at his doorstep www.ukar.org/mclell03.htm
24-Feb-1998    Neal Sher: Koziy testimony coerced www.ukar.org/sher03.html
20-Oct-1999    Sol Littman: Trusting Soviet evidence www.ukar.org/littma20.html
25-Nov-1999    Sol Littman: Hyperbolizing sotrudnyk history www.ukar.org/littma25.html
02-May-2000    Irving Abella: Neal Sher Will Show Us How Hoax www.ukar.org/abella07.html
07-Aug-2001    Leonid Kuchma: Did Sol Littman work for the KGB? www.ukar.org/kuchma33.html
28-Jan-2004    Ed Morgan: Katyn Forest Massacre www.ukar.org/morgan/morgan02.html#Katyn

It might be added to the above that the Canadian public may not appreciate the degree to which East Bloc justice failed to rise to Western standards, a failure that is evidenced in the following reference to Soviet show trials of the 1950s and 1960s:

The show trials were clearly a sham.  Some may have never taken place, as reports of executions appear to have been contradicted by later reappearances of the victims.  For example, in the Linnas trial in Estonia, the results of the trial, the verdict, the details of closing arguments, and the judge's speech were published weeks before the trial took place.
S. Paul Zumbakis, Soviet Evidence in North American Courts: An Analysis of Problems and Concerns with Reliance on Communist Source Evidence in Alleged War Criminals Trials, Canadian Edition, Canadians for Justice — Toronto, Printed by Morkunas Printing Company, Chicago, 1986, p. 13.  Footnotes removed.

When the Soviets did produce documents that they wanted war-crimes prosecutors to rely on, they still kept their archives closed to all, and their representations as to document authenticity were not to be trusted, as summarized below during the cross-examination by defense attorney Ivars Berzins of eminent Jewish-holocaust historian Raul Hilberg:

  1. [By Mr. Berzins]:  Dr. Hilberg, you, yourself, have tried to gain access to these Soviet archives that interest you, have you not?
  1. [By Dr. Hilberg]:  Well, I was a member of an official mission traveling with an official passport to Moscow, and I did request a meeting with Soviet archive visits [sic], which was arranged by the Department of State, and which I was able to conduct.  I was talking to the deputy chief of the Soviet archives, and I wanted to elicit information from him about the state of the German captured document [sic] in the Soviet Union and their eventual accessibility, not to me personally, but to American researchers generally.

    I was under no illusions in these discussions that I would have success in the venture.

    I regarded as a step — one of the steps which was on a long, long road, that may or may not eventually lead to a more general access to Soviet archives.  But there is simply no question of the fact that the Soviet archives are, by and large, closed.

  1. Dr. Hilberg, the certification stamp that you see on Soviet documents, does that have any significance to you?...

  1. It has no meaning in terms of whether it is an original document, whether it is a copy of a document, even whether it is a manufactured document.

    I don't place any credence in Soviet stamps.
S. Paul Zumbakis, Soviet Evidence in North American Courts: An Analysis of Problems and Concerns with Reliance on Communist Source Evidence in Alleged War Criminals Trials, Canadian Edition, Canadians for Justice — Toronto, Printed by Morkunas Printing Company, Chicago, 1986, p. 17.  Footnotes removed.  The two "[sic]" were in the original.  The "archive visits" preceding the first "[sic]" should possibly read "archivists."  The setting is the 1983 trial of Juozas Kungys before the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.

It may be symptomatic of Commissioner Deschenes' preference for receiving Soviet data that on 03-Oct-1985, he refused to hear the above United States attorney Ivars Berzins testimony on the question of Soviet evidence, a topic concerning which Mr. Berzins had acquired considerable expertise (Zumbakis, p. 40).

Soviet witness testimony, in turn, was easy to coerce.  Even if a Soviet witness came to Canada to testify, and brought his wife and children, and was granted asylum so that he never had to return to Soviet territory, and was deposed out of sight of Soviet officials, and was translated by Canadian-supplied translators — even under such optimal circumstances, the witness would still have reason to fear that his testimony would find its way back to the Kremlin, and that the Kremlin would punish the hostages that he had left behind as a guarantee of his good behavior — his mother, his sister, his uncle, his friend.  But if Soviet-origin testimony cannot be trusted even under such optimal circumstances, then what of the defect-ridden standard case where the Soviet witness is not allowed to leave the country, and his entire family is under the power of Soviet authorities, and an Intourist KGB agent does the translating, and a bullying procurator supervises: "On occasion, the procurator even answers for the deponent and reprimands or warns the United States defense counsel that Soviet, not United States, law is to be followed and that an improper question may constitute a violation of the USSR criminal code" (Zumbakis, p. 74).

Commissioner Deschenes argues that the quality of Soviet evidence cannot be evaluated until after it has been collected, and so that it needs to be collected first, after which defect correction can commence:

Mr. Sopinka has given a long list of the defects which render Soviet evidence alien to our concept of justice, e.g., no presumption of innocence, restriction on cross-examination, curtailment of defence evidence, bias of translators, etc.  Assuming those defects to exist, he argues that Soviet rules are in breach of our concept of "fundamental justice" and that evidence so obtained would of necessity be excluded since its admission "would bring the administration of justice into disrepute."  Hence, to use Mr. Sopinka's own words, "taking that evidence would be pointless."

The whole argument is of course predicated on the existence of the defects which have been alleged.  That is the Achilles' heel of the argument: the defects cannot be shown to affect the evidence before the evidence has actually been taken.  Assuming respect for the Canadian rules, such defects would never arise; assuming their disregard, they may arise.  Either way the argument is now premature.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 875.  Italics were in the original.

However, Commissioner Deschenes above is refuted by two considerations:

  1. Coercion of the witness, as by Soviet-government threats to himself or to his family, is ordinarily no more likely to become apparent during his testimony than it was before, such that nothing is gained by making evaluation of the degree of coercion contingent upon receiving the Soviet evidence.  That is, Soviet citizens are immersed in State coercion as fish are in water, they know that to permit Canadian investigators to conclude that they are coerced will unleash punishment, and so no such appearance is likely to be projected during their testimony.

  2. The Canadian adherence to the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt does not demand that coercion of witness testimony be proved, but only that it be demonstrated to be plausible.  Thus, Sopinka above does not assume the existence of defects in police-state testimony, but rather assumes only the plausibility of defects, which under Canadian law is sufficient to discredit the testimony.  Commissioner Deschenes makes the mistake here of placing the burden on the accused of proving that each piece of Soviet testimony is defective, which amounts to demanding that the accused prove his innocence, and which may be the Irwin Cotler and Canadian Jewish Congress preference, but which wanders from Canadian tradition.
To elaborate somewhat, Canadian investigators visiting a totalitarian police state are offered state-picked witnesses, and are not permitted to conduct their own search for alternative witnesses.  Canadian researchers are unable to hire private investigators to discover whether the state-supplied witness has a psychiatric history, or a criminal record, or is a police informant, or makes a habit of testifying on behalf of the state, or has reason to fear being fired or evicted or beaten or assassinated or confined to a psychiatric institution or shipped off to a penal colony.  Deschenes' defending the gathering of Soviet evidence, then, is indefensible, and can be construed as an attempt to protect his Commission, and the Jewish leaders who gave it birth, from the disgrace of coming up with zero war criminals, or a disappointingly small number — where it is understood by all that the only practical method of manufacturing a substantial number of war crimes suspects is that of opening the spigot of Soviet evidence, the same spigot whose flow of evidence led to the 30-Jan-1946 public hanging in Leningrad of nine German officers for their putative role in the Katyn Forest Massacre.  In a totalitarian police state which exercises control over all information, including information exchanged in legal proceedings, especially a police state in which coercion of witnesses has been documented, future coercion is always plausible, and will be usually unprovable when it occurs, which is what justifies John Sopinka's conclusion that "taking that evidence would be pointless."

This plain reasoning would be evident to Irwin Cotler if the shoe were on the other foot.  Thus, Cotler would surely balk at the proposal that Canada try Israelis for war crimes on the basis of testimony gathered from Iraqis living under a Saddam Hussein, or from Syrians living under a Hafez al-Assad, or from Iranians living under an Ayatollah Khomeini, or from Libyans living under a Colonel Gaddafi, or from Germans living under an Adolf Hitler.  The argument that the evidence against accused Israelis should be gathered even from such adverse sources as these, and published in newspapers to the defamation of the accused Israelis, and the defects of such evidence at some later time be discovered by means of a magical defect-detector which does not exist, I am sure would elicit Irwin Cotler's disapproval.

Cotler Does Not Hold Back From Supporting Reliance on Soviet Data

The use of Soviet evidence has been controversial because Ukrainian Canadians, who feel their members are under attack in this inquiry, fear Soviet witnesses could be intimidated and evidence fabricated by the KGB (Soviet secret police).

The Deschenes commission has three mandates: to determine how many alleged Nazi war criminals are in Canada, how they got here and what can be done to bring them to justice.

"If their (the commission's) mandate is not extended, documents will not be discovered, witnesses will not be heard," said Irwin Cotler, counsel for the Congress at the Deschenes inquiry and a professor at McGill University in Montreal.

Unnamed suspects

The probe must be allowed "to follow the evidence wherever it leads," he said. "What's at stake is the integrity of the commission's work."

The commission has received complaints against more than 700 Canadians since it was appointed nearly 1 1/2 years ago and wants to go to the Soviet Union to investigate eight unnamed suspects, Cotler said.
Dana Flavelle, More time urged for hunt of Nazi suspects, The Toronto Star, 10-May-1986, p. A14.  Blue emphasis added.

Below, Irwin Cotler presents his rebuttal of a straw-man parody of the Soviet-wary position, but makes the error of relying on the concept of Soviet evidence released to the West which he supposes can be evaluated by Western standards.  However, witness testimony was always to be gathered on Soviet territory, and how such evidence might be "released" so as to reveal its defects is unexplained; and Kremlin release of documentary evidence for unrestricted analysis in Western laboratories was never allowed.  In other words, Irwin Cotler's concept of "evidence released to the West" is an abstraction for which no counterpart in reality can be found:

Myth No. 5 says that all evidence against former Ukrainians, Latvians and Lithuanians emanating from the Soviet Union is, ipso facto, tainted because of that country's intrigues against these ethnic components of its empire.

The answer to that is that Soviet evidence in the hands of Soviet courts may well be tainted.  But evidence released by the Russians to the West and evaluated according to Western standards of justice is another story altogether.
Irwin Cotler quoted in Ernie Meyer, Human Rights Activist: "Set Up A Nazi War Crimes Unit", The Jerusalem Post, 02-Jan-1989.

Irwin Cotler also claims that the United States and West Germany have found Soviet evidence "not only valid but valuable":

At yesterday's final hearing to receive arguments, Toronto lawyer John Sopinka, representing the Ukrainian-Canadian Committee, told the commission that a trip to the Soviet Union would be premature and unnecessary.

"Valuable" evidence

He said the gathering of Soviet evidence for use against Canadians would violate their constitutional guarantees of fundamental justice and would bring the Canadian judicial system into disrepute.

But Montreal lawyer Irwin Cotler of the Canadian Jewish Congress argued that the experience of the United States and West Germany in prosecuting Nazi war criminals proves that Soviet evidence is "not only valid but valuable."
CP, Deschenes to rule on Soviet trip, The Toronto Star, 04-Oct-1985, p. A8.

However, the outstanding recent piece of evidence from the Soviet Union has been the Trawniki Identification Card attributed to John Demjanjuk, and it is burdened with a long list of invalidating defects, several of them fatal, as has been documented in my 14-May-2001 letter to Alan Dershowitz at www.ukar.org/dersho09.html.  Particularly galling is Cotler's assertion above that the Germans trust Soviet evidence, which overlooks the most prominent of all instances of Germans evaluating Soviet evidence, which occurred upon Israel's handing the Demjanjuk Trawniki Identification Card over to the German BKA for the card's first expert laboratory analysis in the West.  The BKA quickly informed the Israelis that its preliminary examination indicated that the card was an amateur forgery, and that a complete analysis could be performed in under two weeks, at which point Israel terminated the BKA analysis and concealed the BKA opinion:

[T]he German weekly Stern published a shocking revelation on 5 March 1992, proving unmistakably that the Israeli prosecution concealed crucial information about the Travniki document's being a forgery; the Israelis had had the full co-operation of the German police and the Ministry of Justice.  The article states that on 23 January 1987, three weeks before the show-trial began, Superintendent Amnon Bezaleli took the original Travniki document for examination at the German police force's main criminal-identification laboratory in Weisbaden, known by its initials as the BKA.  Bezaleli, it will be remembered, was the head of Israel Police's document-examination laboratory and the prosecution's central witness on the Travniki document.  According to Stern, the BKA, after a cursory examination, told Bezaleli that this was a counterfeit document forged in a more or less amateur way.  [...]  Dr Louis Ferdinand Werner, head of the BKA, informed Bezaleli of the results of the preliminary examination in a private conversation.  Bezaleli consulted people from the state prosecutor's office in Jerusalem, then announced to Werner that all tests on the Travniki document should be halted at once.  Even when Dr Werner told Bezaleli that with the results of further tests, which would take no more than two weeks, he would be able to provide a comprehensive report on the document and its faults, the Israeli position did not change.  Bezaleli took the document and returned to Israel with all due haste.  Dr Werner wrote a memo in the wake of these events, in which he said, "Regarding this case, the experts' doubts will be subordinated to political aspects ... the discovery of true facts in this case is not what is important here."
Yoram Sheftel, The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show-Trial, Victor Gollancz, London, 1994, pp. 336-337.  Details of the several reasons that the BKA discovered for thinking that the Trawniki Card was a forgery can be found at www.ukar.org/dersho09.html#Experts

Irwin Cotler's assertion that the Germans trusted Soviet evidence, then, is the opposite of the truth, and conforms to standard Canadian Jewish Congress procedure — to issue disinformation which a docile press can be counted upon to publish.

Below, Irwin Cotler can be seen defending the gathering of Soviet evidence even when the circumstances fell far short of optimal — which is to say on the occasion of the Soviets at long last issuing their invitation for Commissioner Deschenes to come collect the Soviet evidence, but without meeting most of the Canadian demands:

Things now moved quickly.  On May 28 [1986] the Canadian Embassy in Moscow received a reply from the Soviet Union that ostensibly agreed to the Commission's conditions.  Yet when the Commission staffers examined the Soviet response more closely, they discovered there was less to the reply than met the eye.  True, the Soviets had agreed to permit independent interviewers (not translators) and videotaping by Canadians of witnesses' testimony.  But, they remained vague about other conditions.

They had not indicated whether they would provide the inquiry with the original Nazi documents confiscated after the war.  Photocopies were unacceptable to the Judge, who was concerned with possibly fabricated documents.  The Soviets also ignored the question of access to previous statements made by witnesses.  The Soviets had already violated the confidentiality of the names of suspects in leaks to the press from their Ottawa embassy.  In addition, Meighen contended that the Soviets had failed to guarantee that witnesses would be interviewed under Canadian rules of evidence.  As a result, the Commission declared it would not go to the Soviet Union.

Eastern European groups hailed the Commission's decision.  "What they [the Soviets] wanted to present was well rehearsed ahead of time.  The witnesses, and I use that term in quotations, perform like actors in a play," argued Yaroslaw Botiuk, [Galicia] Division counsel.  Jewish groups who had hoped for a different outcome were disappointed.  But the negative decision was not wholly unexpected.  Congress leaders felt "a bit disappointed," but thought that it was not a fateful decision.  They made representations to have the issue reopened but there was no sustained pressure following the decision to have it reversed.

Only days after the decision, Justice Minister Crosbie granted the Commission yet another three-month extension to complete its already twice delayed report.  Cotler hoped that the extra time would allow the Commission to visit the Soviet Union.
Harold Troper and Morton Weinfeld, Old Wound: Jews, Ukrainians and the Hunt for Nazi War Criminals in Canada, Penguin Books, Markham Ontario, 1988, pp. 204-205.  Footnotes removed and blue font added.

So, then, immediately above can be seen Irwin Cotler advocating a position equivalent to the following shoe-on-the-other-foot scenario: Israelis would be tried in Canada for war crimes in the Middle East, and evidence would be gathered by interviewing witnesses from countries like Iraq, witnesses living under leaders like Saddam Hussein, and these witnesses would not be allowed to come to Canada, but in fact would have to be interviewed in Iraq.  The witnesses would have been selected by Saddam Hussein, and Canadian investigators would not be allowed to perform their own searches for alternative witnesses.  Canadian investigators would have to rely on Saddam-Hussein-supplied translators who in fact would be secret-police agents.  Saddam Hussein would supply photocopies of documentary evidence, and would allow some contact with the originals, but would not allow the originals to be taken to a Western laboratory for a thorough analysis.  Saddam Hussein would not disclose prior statements that witnesses had made, thereby blocking Canadian investigators from evaluating consistency.  Saddam Hussein would leak the names of the Israelis under investigation to the Canadian press.  The Iraqi interviews would be supervised by an Iraqi procurator who would follow Iraqi and not Canadian procedures and rules of evidence.  Defense attorneys who suspected that the witnesses had been coached and rehearsed by the Iraqi secret police would be given no opportunity to gather evidence which might test their suspicion.

Such is the quality of evidence that Irwin Cotler argued to the bitter end should be gathered when the defendants were German or Ukrainian or Lithuanian, and if he were to maintain the consistency that is requisite of a Justice Minister, such is the evidence that he would have to favor being gathered if the defendants were Israeli.

The 883 Suspects Hoax

A new hoax has began to be disseminated just recently — that the Deschenes Commission had drawn up a list of 883 suspects, which can be viewed as substantiation for Adrian Humphreys' view that Canada is a "target-rich environment" for war crimes prosecutions — and which in essence is a resurrection from the grave of the discredited allegation of vast numbers of Nazi war criminals in Canada:

— Not a single charge has been laid under Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, passed in October, 2000, as a requirement of signing on to the international court, despite Canada being a target-rich environment for such investigations.

— The government's move last week to strip citizenship from an 83-year-old Ontario man accused of being a Nazi concentration camp guard during the Second World War is the first historical case launched since 1995.  It brings to just 21 the number accused as wartime Nazis by Ottawa.  By contrast, in 2001, the government had 147 open files of accused Nazi collaborators and 85 cases actively being investigated; the Deschenes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals reported 883 suspects in 1985.
Adrian Humphreys, Lost War Criminals: Canada's "shameful legacy", National Post, 09-Mar-2004, on the Canadian Jewish Congress web site at www.cjc.ca/template.php?action=itn&Story=636  Bold emphasis added.

Although on a superficial level the allegation of 883 suspects can be defended, it nevertheless conveys an impression totally opposite to reality.  That is, the number 883 can be defended as originating from the addition 774 + 38 + 71 = 883, and the National Post calling these 883 people "suspects" can be defended by the Commission having called them "suspects":

The Commission has drawn up three list of suspects: a Master List of 774 names (Appendix II-E); an Addendum of 38 names (Appendix II-F) and a list of 71 German scientists and technicians (Appendix II-G).
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 12.

However, these 883 were not so much suspected of war crimes as they were irresponsibly denounced to the Commission, often anonymously and often with no allegation of war crimes.  Below, the Commission emphasizes that its lists were lists of the denounced, and offers an example of why it does not consider them lists of the suspected:

The story has been told earlier of the collection of the names of suspects from various sources and the compilation of the Commission's Master List which reached a total of 774 names.  This total falls far below the higher figures asserted publicly from time to time over the years; it shows crudely no less than a 400 per cent exaggeration by the proponents of those figures, even leaving aside Wiesenthal's latest statement of 6,000.  Yet a detailed examination of each of those cases was bound to bring about a further dramatic decrease in the number of real war criminals; for many of them, the allegations on the surface could not bear scrutiny.  A single example: the denunciation as war criminals of a couple bearing a German name, living in a secluded place under the protection of two black dogs and offering old European furniture for sale (cases 179 and 180).
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, pp. 248-249.

The number the Commission might be said to have actually suspected was not Simon Wiesenthal's 6,000, nor Irwin Cotler's "maybe 1,000," nor the National Post's 883 — but only 20:

In the 20 other cases where the Commission recommends, in Part II of its Report, that steps be taken toward either revocation of citizenship and deportation or criminal prosecution, urgent attention should be given to implementing those recommendations and, if necessary for that purpose, to bringing the necessary amendments to the law as well as actively seeking the co-operation of the interested foreign governments.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 14 and pp. 827-828.

And it is important to keep in mind that the Commission took no step beyond recommending that the Justice Department take further steps, which recommendation placed in the hands of other authorities the decision as to whether or not the evidence justified taking further steps, with some chance that these other authorities would decide in the negative, and with it being understood that the first one of the next steps would be the gathering of additional evidence, and with it being obvious that the advisability of proceeding was to be reconsidered upon the arrival of each fresh piece of evidence.  And even if the accumulating evidence should appear to justify carrying a prosecution to completion, there still remained the possibility that the evidence would be deemed insufficient or even exculpatory, and that the accused would be acquitted.

In any case, it may be supposed that the Deschenes Commission would have been cognizant of what a slap in the face to the Canadian Jewish Congress and sister organizations it was to recommend for further processing a mere 20 cases, and what a devastating blow it would have been to recommend for further processing any number substantially smaller than 20, and so may have felt pressured to come up with the highest number possible, the paltry 20 being the best that it in good conscience could manage.  If even that twenty was higher than the evidence justified, the Commission might have anticipated little harm, as its role was to placate the Canadian Jewish Congress and sister organizations, and it was the later role of the Justice Department to exercise caution and dispense justice.  In other words, the Deschenes Commission might have felt that it did little harm by recommending further action in 20 cases, because in effect this amounted to no more than recommending further investigation in 20 cases, with a closing of the file remaining an open option at all times.

The number that really gauges the success of the Commission, however, is not that it recommended a Top Twenty for further processing, but how many of its 883 were subsequently convicted under Canada's war crimes legislation — and the answer is none, with the most promising three cases (Finta, Pawlowski, Reistetter) ending in Canadian Jewish Congress defeat, and with no further Nazi war crimes prosecutions attempted since, as is described in a Library of Parliament summary below:

In early November 1987 some participants at an international conference marking the 40th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials expressed concern that, ten months after Mr. Justice Deschênes had submitted his report, no charges had been laid.  Within six weeks, the first war crimes charges had been laid: Mr. Imre Finta was charged with involvement in kidnapping and manslaughter while a mounted police captain during World War II.  His trial before a jury of the Ontario Supreme Court ended in acquittal, a verdict which was upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal in late April 1992 and by the Supreme Court in March 1994.

Michael Pawlowski was charged on 18 December 1989 with eight counts of murder — four under the Criminal Code provisions dealing with war crimes and four under provisions dealing with crimes against humanity.  He was accused of killing about 410 Jews and 80 non-Jewish Poles in the Soviet Republic of Byelorussia in the summer of 1942.  Two separate judges refused to allow the prosecution to send a judicial commission to the Soviet Union to collect evidence, finding that the introduction of such evidence would prejudice Mr. Pawlowski's right to a fair trial.  The ruling of Justice Chadwick was appealed to the Supreme Court, which, without stating the reasons, refused to entertain the appeal in early February 1992.  Unable to convince essential witnesses to change their minds about coming to Canada to testify, the Crown was forced to drop the charges and to contribute to Pawlowski's legal costs.

In January 1990, Stephen Reistetter became the third person to be charged under the War Crimes provisions of the Criminal Code.  It was charged that in 1942, while serving as an official of the Hlinka party in war-time Slovakia, he had kidnapped 3,000 Jews in order to send them to Nazi death camps.  In February 1990, an Ontario Supreme Court Judge ordered that a commission travel to Czechoslovakia to take testimony from elderly witnesses.  On the eve of pre-trial arguments the federal government abruptly dropped charges against him on the grounds that they no longer had sufficient evidence to proceed.

By mid-May 1992, the Crown's special war crimes unit had failed to secure convictions in any of the three prosecutions that had proceeded under the 1987 amendments to the Criminal Code adopted to allow the trial of war criminals in Canada.  The failure to convict those charged and the very slow progress being made in investigating and laying charges in other cases led to renewed accusations that the government lacked commitment in its pursuit of Nazi war criminals.  This impression was strengthened when the Minister of Justice said that the department wanted to conclude these investigations by March 1994.

In late November 1992, the Institute for International Affairs of B'nai Brith released a detailed study of the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in Canada.  The report was harshly critical of the government for its failure to convince public opinion of the need for war crimes legislation and the aggressive prosecution of war criminals, of the prosecutors of the Justice Department's war crimes unit for being overly cautious and waiting for the perfect case before laying charges, and of the judges who had presided over the trials and appeals for the quality of their decisions and for delays in rendering decisions.
Excerpted from Grant Purves, War Criminals: The Deschênes Commission, Library of Parliament, Parliamentary Research Branch, Political and Social Affairs Division, Revised 16-Oct-1998  www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/873-e.htm#E.%20The%20Report-t

Three reflections are evoked by the above Purves summary:
  1. The Prosecution is the Punishment

    Imre Finta was dragged through the courts for seven years and Michael Pawlowski for three years.  The government dropped charges against Stephen Reistetter because it lacked evidence to proceed, but if it had preferred to go ahead and lose at the trial level, then appeal and appeal again, it could have dragged his case out for years as well.

    That legal proceedings drag on in this way seems to be accepted as normal and inevitable by the justice system, but is capable of striking the public as wasteful and needless, and in fact unconscionable and insufferable.  The public is capable of asking why a question that took seven years to answer could not have been answered in seven months, or even in seven days.  Undoubtedly there are bottlenecks which make such acceleration impracticable today; however, in answer to the pointing out of such bottlenecks, the question shifts to why those who manage the justice system have not succeeded over the preceding years in removing these bottlenecks.

    One consequence of inefficiency is that legal proceedings by themselves, no matter what the outcome, exhaust resources, fray nerves, ruin lives, and so are punitive, such that irresponsible groups like the Canadian Jewish Congress are able to inflict punishment by prodding the government to prosecute even when that prosecution is frivolous and vexatious and meritless and can be anticipated at the outset to be defeated.

  2. The Deschenes Commission Found Exactly Zero Nazi War Criminals

    If the first three cases — Finta, Pawlowski, Reistetter — to be tried following the Deschenes Commission were the three most promising to have been discovered in the course of Commission proceedings, then as all three failed, and as no further prosecutions under the war crimes act have been attempted since, it would appear to follow that the remaining less-promising cases are even more likely to fail, and therefore that not a single case brought to light by the Deschenes Commission has led or ever will lead to successful prosecution for war crimes under the war crimes act.

    It must be cautioned, furthermore, that prosecutions that postdated the Deschenes Commission might not have been caused by the Deschenes Commission because (1) they were already under investigation prior to the Deschenes Commission, and the Commission contributed nothing, or (2) they were commenced after, and without the help of, the Deschenes Commission.  That case reporting of war crimes prosecutions fails to explain any connection to the work of the Deschenes Commission leaves observers without justification for blaming particular failed prosecutions on the Commission, or crediting particular successful prosecutions to the Commission.

    Nevertheless, as all three prosecutions under the war crimes act failed long ago, and as no other prosecutions under the act have begun in the years since, it seems safe to conclude that the Deschenes Commission failed to find even a single Nazi war criminal in Canada capable of being convicted under the war crimes act.

  3. Jewish Leadership is Hostile To Western Justice

    Instead of embracing the conclusion that prosecutable Nazis in Canada are an extinct species, Jewish leaders assail the justice system for not bringing to justice the hundreds, or thousands, of prosecutable non-Jewish Nazi war criminals which Jewish leaders believe, but cannot prove, exist.  Jewish leadership, then, regards Canadian justice as a tool whose worth is measured by its ability to promote Canadian Jewish Congress ends.

    The excerpt from the Purves summary above gives further reason for believing that Jewish leaders do not trust Canadian justice and strive to engineer their demanded outcome through extra-judicial means.  That further reason can be found in the statement that a Federal Court judge had expressed "shock that she might be liable to 'vitriolic attacks' if she made a decision unfavourable to the government," which must be understood to mean that the judge feared vitriolic attacks not from the government but from the Jewish leaders at whose prodding the government acted.

Parade of Shame: Sixty-Four Denunciations That Discredit the Denouncers

At the bottom of the instant letter can be found excerpts from 64 of the denunciation synopses provided in the Deschenes Commission Report that caught the eye for being particularly meritless (though of course all 883 denunciations in the end proved meritless in that not a single one gave birth to a conviction under the Canadian war crimes act).  The great body of the denunciations which are not included in the instant sample of 64 failed to rise above the mind-numbing regularity of Commission investigators discovering that the denounced was dead or not living in Canada, or that the denunciation failed to rise above that of Galicia Division membership which the Commission judged blameless, or that the denunciation was unsupported along any of the avenues of verification that were pursued.

Allegations other than of war crimes

Often, the denouncer failed to allege any war crime, but addressed himself only to something else which to his way of thinking seemed blameworthy: No allegations at all were needed to launch an investigation

In order to get the Deschenes Commission to investigate the possibility that the denounced was a Nazi war criminal, it was unnecessary to supply any allegation at all, either of war crimes or of any other kind of crimes, or of being wealthy or speaking German or owning black dogs or of selling European furniture  139 202 247 248 418 429 733

Gratuitous allegations were sufficient to launch an investigation

Or if there was some allegation of Nazi involvement, the denouncer may have made it gratuitously, with the Commission performing its investigation anyway: Denounced on the basis of loose talk in Canada

The denunciation might allege not the denouncer having witnessed war crimes in Europe, but only hearing the denounced talk in Canada, which however never came with proof, and so could easily have been fabricated by the denouncer (as it had been in the Frank Walus case), and which denunciation could be made with impunity because the denounced would be expected to deny having said those things whether he had really said them or not:

Unknown or concealed or misrepresented denouncers

Sometimes the denouncer was unspecified 198 or unnamed 658 or anonymous 248 305 429 433 643.1 648 or could not be found 202 493 555 736 or both anonymous and could not be found 096 588

Incapacity among the ranks of the denouncers

The denouncer was occasionally irrational, unreliable, senile, or relying on someone who was senile: Neither Canadian background, nor Allied war service, offered protection from denunciation

Sometimes the Canadian background of the denounced made it implausible or impossible for him to also have been a Nazi war criminal, as by his having been born in Canada 139 248 633; having entered Canada in 1929 and not returned to Europe during the war years 599; or "has lived all his life in Canada and was drafted into the Canadian army for a short time in 1942"  122

In one case, he who was investigated by the Deschenes Commission for purposes of ascertaining whether he might be a Nazi war criminal had fought against, and been captured by, the Germans: "he was a pilot in the Allied Air Force and had been taken prisoner by the Germans"  247

The denouncer having been born in Canada had implications too, as such a denouncer would not be "in a position to identify anyone who might have been involved in war crimes"  644

Non-culpable German military service offered no protection from denunciation either

Commission investigators would often discover that someone accused of having been a member of the SS had been only in the Wehrmacht (regular army) 648, or that someone accused of having been a member of the Gestapo had been only in the Luftwaffe (air force) 658

Age presented no barrier to being denounced

Often the denounced was too young to have committed war crimes during WW II, or at least the war crimes alleged, with the age of the denounced at the end of the war in 1945 being the critical piece of disqualifying information:

 One denounced was born in 1885, and thus would have been 101 years old at the time of the Deschenes Commission Report in 1986, and therefore not a promising subject for investigation because of the improbability that he was alive, or if alive that he would survive a trial, or would even be fit to stand trial  041

It was not unusual for a denunciation to consist of hearsay

The knowingly absent and dead were denounced

As the Deschenes Commission was looking for war criminals living in Canada, it had no interest in investigating war criminals outside Canada, or war criminals that were dead, and yet sometimes the denouncer appeared to know that the person he denounced was not living in Canada 150 151 293 306 337 381 425 or was dead 425 772

Those who claimed to have information were sometimes uncooperative

Denouncers appeared to expect not to have to explain or justify their denunciations, and therefore when interviewed might refuse cooperation 056 or opt for amnesia 291.  Sometimes a source other than the denouncer seemed to have information but refused to disclose it: "The Commission interviewed a source related to the newspaper who seemed to indicate that he knew that the subject resides either in Canada or in another country, but he refused to divulge the information"  257

Sometimes the ulterior motivation showed

Occasionally, the ulterior motivation of the denouncer became apparent: "The Commission subsequently learned that the subject under investigation and the complainant were related by marriage and that the complainant had allegedly threatened to ruin the subject financially some years ago"  733

Sometimes the information was too skimpy for a complete investigation

Sometimes the superficiality of the research showed

When Simon Wiesenthal deigned to look in a phone book for evidence that the denounced lived in Canada, the result was what can be expected from research of such superficiality  409


The bulk of the denunciations for which the Commission provided synopses give the impression that Jewish leaders had whipped up the more suggestible and excitable among their followers into a state of acute paranoia, and had elicited from them a flood of reckless and irresponsible denunciations which the Commission was obligated to investigate.  Most of the denunciations gave the impression that the Commission was being used to investigate not suspected war criminals, but people who had had the misfortune to displease a Jew, or who found themselves on a Canadian Jewish Congress enemies list.  Principles that had for generations formed the basis of civilized relations in Western society were thrown out the window — principles such as that irresponsible denunciations were damaging to both the denouncer and the denounced and of negligible use to the State, and that in the interest of domestic tranquility they were to be discouraged, and that they might be prosecutable under Public Mischief laws.  Rather, what the Commission sought was to make up for the poor quality of the denunciations by sheer number, and to spend the Commission budget in the busywork of carrying out investigations the vast majority of which obviously lacked the remotest chance of leading to a conviction for war crimes.

The Thirty Most Shameful Denunciations Were Concealed

Even though large numbers of denunciations can be seen above to have been so groundless or contraindicated as to be disgraceful, the Commission considered a separate thirty to have been so extremely shameful as to need to be concealed, and provided not even the typical skimpy synopsis of them.  Below, the Commission explains the exception to the rule that the names of all denounced would be assigned case numbers and would be investigated:

The exception was a list of thirty names which were not pursued because the very nature of the allegation was so insubstantial that any follow-up was inappropriate: e.g., individuals too young to have participated in the war, instances where the cause of suspicion was limited to the suspect's appearance, ethnic background, etc.
Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 49.

However, the Parade of Shame above has documented that many of the denounced who were assigned case numbers and were investigated had exactly these characteristics of the thirty most shameful — as for example that they were too young or that the cause of suspicion was limited to appearance or ethnic background.  One is left, then, without explanation of what typified the Thirty Most Shameful Denunciations, other than the extreme degree to which grounds for denunciation were lacking.  It might be objected, however, that whatever may have been the motivation for Commissioner Deschenes to suppress the individual synopses for the Thirty Most Shameful Denunciations, the effect of such suppression has been to shield from deeper discredit the Canadian Jewish Congress and sister organizations who solicited and submitted such denunciations.

A Summary of 98 Canadian Jewish Congress Denunciations

Below is a summary of the 98 denunciations which Commission synopses starting on Commission Report p. 275 credit to the CJC, in whole or in part.  Although the Commission attributes 209 denunciations to the "Canadian Jewish Congress (and Professor Irwin Cotler)" [p. 47], the case synopses in the Commission Report actually acknowledge CJC origin in only the 98 cases that are tabled below, where the first three-digit number (though sometimes with one decimal, and on one occasion being A-35) is the Case No., and the last three-digit number is the Commission Report page number on which the case synopsis begins.  The capital letter in the middle is either

"C" for "Closed" signifying that the Commission recommended — with only an occasional variation of wording — "On the basis of the foregoing, it is recommended that the file on the subject be closed";

"E" for "European" signifying that on the basis of available evidence, the file should be closed, but if the Government of Canada decided to solicit further evidence from a European government, then the case could be re-assessed; or

"A" for "Action" signifying that the Commission called for further investigation.

004C276 017C284 019C285 026C291 033C295 041C300 060C314 065E316 098C340 103C342
111C346 131C357 137C361 139C362 153E369 160C375 171C381 176E383 176.1A384 177C385
198C396 200E397 202C399 240C423 243C425 247C428 248C429 269C444 277E449 286.1C454
291C456 292C457 305C465 307C466 316E472 339C485 359C497 364C499 371.2A504 372C506
375E507 376E509 377E510 394C518 405E527 411E532 420C537 422E539 425C540 427C541
429C542 448E553 451C556 455C558 456C559 458C559 464C563 475E569 477E570 489C579
496C583 517C595 526C601 529C603 536C607 538E608 539C610 552C617 561C623 562C624
568C627 569E628 571C629 588C638 605C650 614C655 624E660 627C662 629C663 633C665
644C671 648C673 655A677 658E680 666C686 675E692 686C699 719E716 730E722 732A724
736C727 738C728 744C732 747C733 770C747 772C748 773C749 A-35A772

The frequency distribution arising from the above is as follows:

Symbol     Meaning     Number     Percent
C Close 71 72%
E European 22 22%
A Action 05 05%
98 100%

"E" for "European" also happens to refer to an Eastern Bloc government 21 times out of 22 — the one time that it does not is in Case No. 475 where it refers to the government of West Germany.  Summing the Close and European categories gives 93/98 cases (95%) which on the basis of evidence available to the Commission are recommended closed, and only five cases recommended for further action.  The nature of those CJC-Top-Five denunciations is discussed below.

What Was the Quality of the CJC-Top-Five Denunciations?

Examination of the five above cases which are marked "A" for "Action" reveals that their further investigation is recommended for the flimsiest of reasons, and without expectation that a Nazi war criminal will be discovered:

  1. Nazi War Criminal Or Merely Charged With Three Unrelated Offences in Canada?

    The only evident reason for the Commission recommending that "all foreign checks should be conducted on the subject" seems to be his having been charged with three offences, unrelated to the Commission's investigation, in Canada.  Further undermining expectation that a Nazi war criminal has been discovered is that the overheard confession is implausible:

    CASE NO. 176.1   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private individual.  It was alleged that the source had overheard the subject under investigation admit to his wife that he had been a member of the SS and "had killed many men".  [...]  The CPIC response indicated that the subject had been charged with three offences not relevant to the Commission's investigation.  The first charge was dismissed, the second charge withdrawn and the third charge is pending.  [...]  The Commission interviewed the individual who submitted the subject's name to the Canadian Jewish Congress, and determined that she had no additional information relevant to the Commission's inquiries.

  2. Nazi War Criminal or Radio Operator?

    The Commission could not decide whether Case 371.2 denounced an individual who immigrated to Canada in 1951 or one in 1958.  The Commission recommended that the file on the 1951 subject be closed because he had only been a member of the Wehrmacht (Regular Army).  The 1958 subject turned out to have been a radio operator; nevertheless, the Commission recommends that the Government should "locate the 1958 immigrant and obtain further evidence in respect to this individual":

    CASE NO. 371.2   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP and the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was anonymous.  It was alleged that this individual was a Nazi and had been a commander of a concentration camp.  Apart from the foregoing, there was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this individual.  [...]  The Commission was also advised by the Berlin Document Center that it had a record of the other individual (the 1958 immigrant), which indicated his membership in the Waffen-SS in 1941.  This individual was trained as a communications officer, specializing in radio and field telephone work.  He spent much of the war with a specified regiment in Western Europe, as well as at various communications training courses.  He served briefly at the front in 1942 and again with an army unit in 1942-1943.  In 1944, he was transferred from his first regiment to another SS Division.  During the course of his service in the SS, he was promoted.  This person does not, however, seem to have been involved in anything other than radio and telephone communications.  There is therefore no evidence of the original allegation against either one of the two immigrants of 1951 or 1958.  [p. 504-505.  Parenthesized material and italics were in the original.] 

  3. Nazi War Criminal in Europe or Neo-Nazi in Canada?

    Case 655 is not the CJC discovering someone who committed crimes in Europe during the war, but only of someone alleged to have engaged in incorrect political activity following arrival in Canada after the war:

    CASE NO. 655   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a European institutional office.  It was alleged that this individual had been involved in neo-Nazi activities in Canada.  [...]  The strength of his National Socialist convictions is mentioned several times in the documents.  On the basis of the available evidence, there is no prima facie case of war crimes against the subject.  The matter deserves, however, deeper consideration.  [pp. 677-678]

  4. Nazi Cannibal or Maybe None of Eleven Possible Individuals?

    Case 732 has no chance of being mistaken for a CJC discovery of a Nazi war criminal for several reasons: the denouncer could not be found, the denunciation was preposterous, and no one with the name of the denounced could be found, either in Canada or on lists of war criminals, and the best that the Commission was able to do was to locate surname matches with given names similar to that of the denounced.  The further action that the Commission invoked was merely that of trying to clear up a particularly confused file: "In order to clear up the uncertainties which clutter this file [...]."

    CASE NO. 732   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in the course of a review it conducted of its files following the establishment of the Commission.  It was alleged by a private individual to the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) in 1966 that the subject under investigation had admitted killing Jewish girls and eating and selling human flesh.  The allegation subsequently came to the attention of CSIS.  [...]  The Commission attempted to locate the individual who had submitted the subject's name to the Canadian Jewish Congress in order to assist in establishing the identity of the subject and to obtain additional information, but was unable to do so.  [...]  For the time being, the whole matter is shrouded in a cloud of possibilities and similarities between the subject, seven immigrants to Canada and four individuals denounced by the two separate governments.  Either these should be clarified, or the file ought to be closed.  [pp. 724-725]

  5. Nazi War Criminal or Phantom?

    Case No. A-35 denounces someone whose name and address aren't known, and where the denouncer is relying not on any first-hand knowledge, but only on statements made by his "close friend" whose source of knowledge is not disclosed, and who for some reason does not come forward himself.  It is possible that this close friend is relying on another close friend, and so on in a chain of close friends of undetermined length:

    CASE NO. A-35   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress which was informed by a private citizen that an unidentified Nazi war criminal is hiding in Canada.  The source was interviewed and stated that he had received information from a close friend to the effect that a Nazi war criminal (name unknown), approximately 75 years of age, had been working in Canadian locations for approximately 40 years and then went into hiding several years ago.  The subject had said other things which raised suspicions that he might be a war criminal.  [pp. 772-773.  Parenthesized material was in the original.]

If the above five denunciations are the best that the Canadian Jewish Congress was able to come up with, then it might be fair to say that balancing the negative pan that holds the mountain of CJC denunciations that were gratuitous or frivolous or vindictive or irresponsible was the positive pan holding five cases whose weight accumulated to a feather.  However, as has already been acknowledged, the Commission credits the CJC with 209 denunciations, but mentions the CJC in only 98 of the case synopses, such that some 111 CJC cases are at present unaccounted for, and thus the overall quality of CJC denunciations is impossible to measure accurately.  Nevertheless, despite 111 CJC denunciation synopses being inaccessible for examination, it is still possible to place a cap on the CJC success rate by recollecting that not one of the Commission's 883 denunciations led to a successful prosecution under Canada's war crimes legislation.  Furthermore, the degree of CJC success in identifying individuals for prosecution not for war crimes but for conjectured immigration infractions is unknown, as such prosecution does not disclose whether the prosecuted had been discovered by the Deschenes Commission.


 Irwin Cotler Complicity in the Deschenes Commission

Irwin Cotler's name appears throughout the Deschenes Commission Report, as for example:


More dramatically symptomatic of Irwin Cotler's zealotry in the Canadian Jewish Congress cause was his reaction to Government of Canada Lawyer Ivan Whitehall's aggressive cross-examination of Sol Littman which resulted in Littman's confessing to having himself manufactured the Mengele Hoax gratuitously.  In response to this undermining of the rationale for the Commission, Irwin Cotler waited until the Commission had closed its session for the day to step forward to demonstrate that he went beyond playing the role of counsel ethically representing the CJC, to the role of CJC fanatic resorting to unethical means to protect Sol Littman's Mengele Hoax from exposure — which is to say that Irwin Cotler together with Ken Narvey accosted Ivan Whitehall after the close of proceedings for the day, and attempted to bully Whitehall into placing loyalty to the success of their witch hunt above Whitehall's loyalty to truth, and attempted to bully Whitehall into neglecting his duty to the Government of Canada, his employer:

Nazi probe adjourns in face-to-face row

The Toronto Star
Saturday, 07-Dec-1985, p. A13


HULL, Que. (CP) — Tempers flared as Mr. Justice Jules Deschenes adjourned what may be his final week of public hearings on suspected Nazi war criminals in Canada — a week that left Jewish representatives angry and disillusioned.

Deschenes had no sooner left the room yesterday than Irwin Cotler, lawyer of the Canadian Jewish Congress stopped Ivan Whitehall, the justice department lawyer who acted for the federal government before the commission, and suggested that his attack on Nazi hunter Sol Littman as a vigilante earlier this week may have undermined the commission's work.

Ken Narvey of the North American Jewish Students' Union joined the fray, raising his voice angrily until Whitehall, apparently tired of trying to explain his criticism of Littman, turned and left.

Discredit campaign

Cotler and Narvey are concerned that a strike against Littman could discredit the campaign to bring Nazi war criminals to justice.

The dispute began Wednesday, when Whitehall accused Littman of using "unfounded allegations" about Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi doctor, to convince Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to order an inquiry.

Littman, armed with scanty information obtained under U.S. freedom of information laws, wrote to Mulroney in December declaring that Mengele had tried to enter Canada from Argentina in 1962.  He urged the Prime Minister to investigate.

Two weeks later, in the midst of public concern that Mengele — the Angel of Death — might be in Canada, the Progressive Conservative government set up the Deschenes commission.

Entered Canada

Deschenes was ordered to determine whether Mengele or any other Nazi war criminal had ever entered Canada and how they might be brought to justice if they were still living here.

As the commission struggled to get to the root of the Mengele story, Littman admitted Thursday that he alone concluded, wrongly, last year that Mengele had tried to come to Canada.

Although Whitehall insists he is not questioning the value of the commission, Jewish groups feared that the inquiry's work might be for nothing.
Blue emphasis added.


What You Must Do

You Must Alert the 883 Denounced

In my letter of 05-Oct-1999 to then Justice Minister Anne McLellan at www.ukar.org/mclell23.html, and in greater detail in my letter of 05-Oct-1999 to Sol Littman at www.ukar.org/littma10.html, I proposed that all 883 of the denounced, or their surviving relatives, should be informed (a) that they have been denounced to the Deschenes Commission, (b) that they have been investigated, and (c) that in consequence, their names likely linger on lists of suspected war criminals not only across Canada, but all over the world.

This recommendation is based on a principle that is as simple to grasp as it is impossible to oppose — that when an individual has been secretly wronged, it is obligatory to inform him of it so that he or his family can take corrective and protective measures.

The recommended notification should begin immediately, and should be largely completed within a matter of weeks, with only difficult-to-locate individuals or families taking longer.

You Must Beware of the Prolongation of Canadian Jewish Congress Tradition

Publicity of such meetings as that which occasioned the photograph below, and which included Canadian Jewish Congress representatives, and which was attended also by Irwin Cotler, will occasion some Canadians to wonder whether you are protective enough of Canada's interests to enquire to what degree Jewish leaders intend to continue in the Canadian Jewish Congress tradition of disinformation and hoaxes that I have been documenting in the instant letter.


Brent Belzberg (co-chair CIJA), Steven Cummings (co-chair CIJA), Prime Minister Paul Martin, Keith Landy, Eric Vernon and Hershell Ezrin (CEO CIJA) meet at Parliament Hill  (absent from photo Manuel Prutschi)  (Ottawa, March 29, 2004)
Photograph is from the Canadian Jewish Congress web site News Release, 01-Apr-2004  www.cjc.ca/template.php?action=news&story=639  Caption is from the Canadian Jewish Congress Photo Gallery at www.cjc.ca/template.php?action=images&Language=EN

What awareness of the Canadian Jewish Congress tradition of deceit and manipulation requires of you is that when Jewish leaders complain about a world-wide resurgence of anti-Semitism, you ask them how they are able to distinguish any world-wide resurgence of anti-Semitism from a world-wide eruption of disapproval of world Jewry's supporting the Israeli policy of acquiring Palestinian land through disinformation and homicide.

And when Jewish leaders tell you that they have been the victims of Arab aggression in the Middle East, please ask them to furnish you with a comparison of the annual totals from 1948 through 2003 of
  1. the number of Arabs killed by Jews, and the number of Jews killed by Arabs,

  2. the number of Arabs who have been expelled from their homes by Jews, and the number of Jews who have been expelled from their homes by Arabs, and

  3. the number of Arabs sitting in Jewish prisons, and the number of Jews sitting in Arab prisons.
These are the annual figures that you will be asking for, so that you might be convinced that Jews have in every year between 1948 to 2003, and in each of the three categories above, indeed been the victims of Arab aggression, as Jewish leaders ask you to believe, or perhaps so that you can be convinced instead that in every year and on every measure it is the Israelis who have played the role of aggressors, and the Arabs who have played the role of victims.

And when Jewish leaders lay before you proposals to quell "anti-Semitism," please ask them whether Canadians might have trouble distinguishing what is requested from a suppression of criticism of the misdeeds of Jewish and Israeli leaders, and whether Canadians might have trouble distinguishing what is requested from an encroachment on their freedom of speech and on their right to petition for redress of grievances.

And when Jewish leaders ask you to support the fight against terrorism, please ask whether you are not being asked to sanction Israeli terrorism, and to disparage as terrorism the belated and feeble attempts by Arab freedom fighters to emancipate their people from Israeli terror.

And when Jewish leaders urge you to fight racism and discrimination, please ask them if that fight would not more properly begin in Israel where, for example, Arab cars are required to display different license plates from Jewish cars, or perhaps in the halls of the Canadian Human Rights Commission which supports Jewish complaints of hate messaging over Ukrainian or German or Lithuanian or Muslim complaints in a ratio which is hypothesized to run in the order of a million dollars to one.

Please also ask the Jewish representatives you meet with — what loyalty to Canada, and what good will toward Canadian well-being, was being demonstrated by the Canadian Jewish Congress encouraging violence-prone psychopath and convicted terrorist Steven Rambam to broadcast his many statements to the effect that "Canada is a place of refuge for the scum of the earth" and "The Canadians are scum" which I brought to your attention in my 25-Mar-2004 letter at www.ukar.org/martin/martin05.html#defames.

Such are the questions that a Prime Minister has a duty to ask when meeting Jewish leaders whose depth of committment to Canadian Jewish Congress traditions has not been plumbed.

You Must Fire Irwin Cotler

The Deschenes Commission occupies a place among the outstanding miscarriages of justice in Canada's history.  It was worse than McCarthyism in the United States because it incited an entire group to participate in a witch-hunting frenzy, and convinced them that the government was at their disposal as a weapon to shower ruin on anybody who happened to displease them.  The Deschenes Commission promoted national fragmentation.  It set back progress in the advance toward tolerance.  It shattered the confidence of large segments of the population that the Canadian government represented them equally, and allowed them equal right to petition for redress of their grievances, and perceived them as equals before the law.  Jews were invited to look upon their neighbors with distrust, to search them for the slightest symptom of disaffection, and if they were not perfectly satisfied with what they saw, to denounce them to the State.  This took Canada a step in the direction of imitating the conditions that prevailed in the KGB-terrorized Russia, and in the Stasi-stifled East Germany.  It took Canada a step in the direction of trusting children to detect disloyalty in adults at the time of the Killing Fields in Cambodia.  All who supported the Deschenes Commission travesty are today tainted.  None who played a leading role in the Deschenes Witch Hunt can today be entrusted with positions of responsibility.

The Deschenes Commission did not promote the eradication of anti-Jewish feeling through the prosecution of pockets of Nazism; rather it incited anti-Jewish feeling through the intimidation of a broad swath of blameless Canadians.  The Deschenes Commission did not work to protect the Jewish people, it worked to protect the incumbency of the Canadian Jewish Congress leadership which would be left jobless the moment it failed to project the spectre of "anti-Semitism" on Jewish consciousness.  The Canadian Jewish Congress is Canada's leading manufacturer of hate propaganda, is a leading force of internal dissension, is a leading inciter of inter-ethnic animosity.  The Canadian Jewish Congress takes central blame for creating a group that lives in fear within permanently-circled wagons, ever awaiting the attack of the Gestapo, and shooting at everything outside the circle that moves.

At the bottom of my 25-Mar-2004 letter to you titled Irwin Cotler collaboration with Steven Rambam, I proposed three reasons why Irwin Cotler cannot serve as Minister of Justice and Attorney General, to which I now add the fourth reason which emerges from the instant letter:

  1. Irwin Cotler collaborated with convicted terrorist Steven Rambam in staging the Fifty-Confessions Hoax

  2. Irwin Cotler flouts the Canadian charter guarantee of equality before the law

  3. Irwin Cotler advocates using government prosecution as a tool of indoctrination

  4. Irwin Cotler played a leading role in the string of hoaxes which constitute the Deschenes Commission Witch Hunt

Irwin Cotler's sharing leadership within the Deschenes Commission Witch Hunt can, of course, be broken down into his support of all the component hoaxes.  Thus, Irwin Cotler's after-hours confrontation of Ivan Whitehall was Cotler's attempt to blind the public to the fact that Mengele's attempt to enter Canada was a hoax.  By means of the Canadian Jewish Congress submission of 209 largely-gratuitous denunciations, as well as by his publicized estimates of the number of war criminals in Canada culminating in "maybe 1,000," Irwin Cotler contributed to the Canada-is-a-Sanctuary-for-Nazis Hoax.  Irwin Cotler joined in the vilification of the oft-exculpated, oft-exonerated, and oft-vindicated Galicia Division.  Irwin Cotler demonstrated absolute blindness to the most egregious demonstration of ethnic-national-religious discrimination in recent memory — namely the Deschenes Commission's persecution by Jews of non-Jews for crimes of which Jews themselves stood most prosecutable.  Irwin Cotler was a leading defender of the plan which would ally the most irresponsible group in Canadian society — Jewish leaders demanding Nazi war crimes prosecutions — with totalitarian police states in the production of evidence for use in Canadian courts.

The four categories of misdeed enumerated above, then, justify the conclusion that Irwin Cotler is a force of divisiveness in Canadian society, and is destined to suffer a progressive loss of esteem as Canadians discover his true nature.  He has no place in your cabinet, and is least of all suited for the post of Justice Minister and Attorney General.  Every additional day that Irwin Cotler remains in office is an additional day that your government is sullied, and that Canadian administration of justice is dragged into deeper disrepute.  The sooner you replace Irwin Cotler with someone able to administer justice dispassionately and disinterestedly, the sooner will Canadians be freed to regard their justice system without embarrassment.




Lubomyr Prytulak


Parade of Shame

Excerpts from 64 case synopses in the Commission Report (pp. 275-827).  Blue font added to Canadian Jewish Congress.  It should be kept in mind while reading the excerpts below that not one of the 883 denounced has ever been convicted under Canada's war crimes act, and thus that all seeming instances of hard evidence likely proved impossible to substantiate:


CASE NO. 020   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith, Canada, whose source of information was a private citizen.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this individual.  [...]  The Commission interviewed the citizen who submitted the subject's name to the League for Human Rights, and determined that he had no additional information relevant to the Commission's inquiries.  In fact, his complaint was founded only on the fact that the subject spoke German and was educated in a West European city.  [p. 286]

CASE NO. 041   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by both the Canadian Jewish Congress and Mr. Sol Littman, whose source of information was a newspaper publication.  It was alleged that this individual had been involved in the Galicia Division of the Waffen-SS, though there was no specific allegation or evidence that he had otherwise been involved in war crimes.  [...]  The immigrant was reported to have been born in 1885.  If alive, the immigrant would now be 101 years of age.  [p. 300]

CASE NO. 054.1   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by a private citizen, who alleges that the subject had been an official in the SS in a West European country and that he boasted of killing Jews and others.  [...]  The Commission interviewed the citizen who submitted the subject's name and determined that he had no additional information relevant to the Commission's inquiries.  He is of an advanced age and for some time has been in a state of confusion.  [pp. 310-311] 

CASE NO. 056   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was a private individual.  It was alleged that the subject under investigation had been a Nazi and had been guilty of unspecified cruelty.  [...]  The Commission was advised that the Berlin Document Center could not respond to a request for details of a record in respect of the subject without additional information, such as date of birth.  As the original complainant subsequently decided not to provide any more information to authorities, this matter could not be pursued.  [p. 312]

CASE NO. 060   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private citizen.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this individual apart from the citizen's assertion that he was a member of the SS during World War II.  [...]  The Department of Employment and Immigration submitted seven separate landing records on persons with given names similar to the name of the subject under investigation.  However, the oldest person would have been only ten years old at the beginning of the war, and it would be therefore almost impossible for this individual to have committed a war crime.  [p. 314]

CASE NO. 062   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith, whose source of information was a private citizen.  It was alleged that the subject may have had an SS past.  [...]  The Commission interviewed the citizen who submitted the subject's name to B'nai Brith, and determined that he had no additional information relevant to the Commission's inquiries, nor had he any basis for making the allegation.  [p. 315]

CASE NO. 092   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the League for Human Rights, B'nai Brith, whose source of information was a private individual.  It was alleged that the subject under investigation had participated in rounding up Jews during the German occupation of the Eastern Bloc and that he was in the SS.  [...]  It is to be noted that the information obtained by the Commission indicates that this individual was born in 1930 and would therefore have been between 9 and 15 years of age during the war.  [p. 335]

CASE NO. 096   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP whose source of information was an anonymous letter.  It alleges that the author's spouse had been shot by the subject, who was an SS helper and a member of the police in the Eastern Bloc at the time.  The author maintains the subject killed Jews and others and ordered people to concentration camps.  [...]  The Commission made every effort to trace the return address of the citizen who submitted the subject's name without success.  [p. 338]

CASE NO. 121   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Department of the Solicitor General which, in turn, had received information from a private citizen.  It was alleged that this individual may have been a doctor who experimented on concentration camp prisoners.  [...]  The Commission interviewed the citizen who submitted the subject's name to the Solicitor General's Office and determined that she had no additional information relevant to the Commission's inquiries.  The interview also established that the complainant was not in a position to place the subject in a Nazi war camp nor was she in possession of names of witnesses able to connect the subject with wartime criminal activities.  [...]  Also, the subject would have been only 15 to 20 years old during the war, hardly an age to have the position suggested by the source.  [pp. 352-353]

CASE NO. 122   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by an anonymous note.  The only allegation initially made was that the subject was a war criminal and was living at a certain address in Canada.  The Commission investigated the information and is satisfied that the subject is resident at the Canadian address indicated by the source.  However, the evidence also indicates the individual has lived all his life in Canada and was drafted into the Canadian army for a short time in 1942.  [p. 353]

CASE NO. 133   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was Mr. Sol Littman.  It was alleged that the subject under investigation had been a member of the SS.  [...]  These investigations revealed that the subject was born in 1933 and would therefore have been between 6 and 12 years of age during the war.  [p. 359]

CASE NO. 139   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was the American Jewish Committee.  [...]  It is likely he was born in Canada and for that reason the above-named checks were negative.  [p. 362]

CASE NO. 150   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by Mr. Sol Littman, whose source of information was a publication of Mr. Simon Wiesenthal.  It was alleged that this individual had been involved in killing members of the resistance in an Eastern Bloc country.  [...]  The Commission interviewed Mr. Littman and was advised that the subject was not in Canada.  [p. 367]

CASE NO. 151   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by Mr. Sol Littman, whose source of information was a specific publication which alleged that this individual had attended an SS school.  [...]  The Commission interviewed Mr. Littman and was advised that the subject was in another country.  [p. 368]

CASE NO. 154   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by a private citizen.  It was alleged that the subject had said it was not safe for him to return to his German homeland.  [...]  The Department of the Secretary of State reported that the subject was granted Canadian citizenship in 1934.  The Department of External Affairs reported that the subject was subsequently granted Canadian passports.  [...]  The Commission interviewed the citizen who submitted the subject's name and determined that she had no additional information relevant to the Commission's inquiries.  Further, she admitted the third person who had told her of the subject was a little senile.  [p. 370]

CASE NO. 158   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by a private citizen.  The only allegation initially made was that the subject was a war criminal because he was so wealthy and of German background.  [...]  It reviewed materials received from the Berlin Document Center comprising the subject's registration forms as an ethnic German.  They confirmed the subject's rather recent date of birth, but indicated no evidence or reason to suspect that the subject had committed any war crimes.  [pp. 373-374]

CASE NO. 170   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the B'nai Brith, whose source of information was a private citizen.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this individual.  [...]  The Commission interviewed the individual who submitted the subject's name to B'nai Brith, who provided certain hearsay information.  [p. 380]

CASE NO. 171   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Department of Justice and the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this individual, apart from the allegation that he was a member of the Galicia Division of the Waffen-SS.  [...]  The Commission reviewed material available from the RCMP and determined that it would be impossible for the individual who landed in Canada to have committed a war crime.  According to the year of birth, this person would have been only five or six years old at the end of World War II.  [p. 381]

CASE NO. 179   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by an anonymous letter.  The only allegation initially made was that the subject was the owner of a shop who behaved curiously regarding the sources of the store's goods.  The subject is the spouse of the individual who is reported in Case No. 180.  Both were denounced in the same anonymous letter.  [...]  The Commission checked the shop itself and concluded that the complaint is entirely spurious and unfounded.  [p. 386]

CASE NO. 180   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by an anonymous letter.  The only allegation initially made was that the subject was the owner of a shop who behaved curiously regarding the sources of the store's goods.  [...]  The Commission also checked the shop itself and concluded that the complaint is entirely spurious and unfounded.  [p. 386]

CASE NO. 186   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was a private individual.  It was alleged that the subject under investigation had admitted in the course of treatment of the source that he had been a doctor in a Nazi war camp.  [...]  Further investigation revealed no evidence that the subject was a medical doctor, indeed it would not be reasonable to believe that an individual born in 1928 could have been a doctor between 1939 and 1945.  [p. 389]

CASE NO. 190   This family's surname was brought to the attention of the Commission by Mr. David Matas, whose source of information was an anonymous letter claiming the family came from a foreign country and deserved investigation because they were "recluses."  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this family.  [...]  After a thorough investigation of the address submitted to the Commission and of the family residing there, the Commission found no persons of an age that could conceivably have participated in World War II war crimes.  The mother and father were born in 1942 and 1940 respectively, their children obviously some time later, and both sets of grandparents reside in a foreign country and have never entered Canada.  [p. 391]

CASE NO. 198   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP and the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was unspecified.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against the subject under investigation, other than the general statement that he was believed to be a war criminal living in Canada.  [...]  In light of the absence of any allegation by the Canadian Jewish Congress and the absence of any individual complainants, the Commission could not obtain any further information on the subject.  [p. 396]

CASE NO. 202   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private citizen.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this individual, and the information received was irrational.  [...]  The Commission contacted the wife of the subject, who stated that she did not know the citizen (who made the allegation) and that her husband never had any business dealings with a person by that name.  The Commission also tried to locate the complainant but to no avail.  [p. 399]

CASE NO. 247   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private citizen.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against the individual.  [...]  The Commission was advised by the German Military Service Office for notifying the next of kin of members of the former German Wehrmacht (WASt) in Berlin that it had a record of a person with the same name as the subject, which indicated that he was a pilot in the Allied Air Force and had been taken prisoner by the Germans.  [p. 428]

CASE NO. 248   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was anonymous.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this individual.  [...]  The Commission received sufficient information to conclude that it is more than likely that the individual born in Canada and the subject under investigation, are the same person.  [p. 429]

CASE NO. 257   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by a private individual, whose hearsay information via a newspaper article was that the subject may have some involvement with another individual allegedly involved in the shooting of 1,800 Jews.  [...]  The Commission interviewed a source related to the newspaper who seemed to indicate that he knew that the subject resides either in Canada or in another country, but he refused to divulge the information.  [p. 435]

CASE NO. 291   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP whose source of information was the Canadian Jewish Congress.  It was alleged that this individual had admitted to the complainant to the Congress that he had been a member of the Nazi Party, had run a concentration camp and had killed many Jews.  [...]  The Commission interviewed the complainant who had submitted the subject's name to the Canadian Jewish Congress.  She indicated that she had no recollection of the complaint that she was alleged to have reported to the Congress.  [pp. 456-457]

CASE NO. 293   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by Mr. Sol Littman, whose source of information was a publication of Mr. Simon Wiesenthal.  It was alleged that this individual had been responsible for a pogrom against the Jewish inhabitants of an Eastern European country in 1941.  [...]  The Commission interviewed Mr. Littman and was advised that the subject was in a West European country.  [p. 458]

CASE NO. 269   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private citizen.  It was alleged that this individual is a physician whose physical description resembles that of the notorious war criminal Dr. Mengele.  [...]  Personal data of the subject taken from various documentation reveal the following in comparison with the information contained in the Commission file with respect to Dr. Mengele:


Year of Birth
Height
Weight
Eyes
Face
Chin 		Subject

1913
6'3"+
195-215 lbs
Blue
Oval (from Photo)
— 		Dr. Mengele

1911
5'8"+
Medium build
Brown
Round
Round
  
In addition, the picture of the subject appearing in the various documents received, does not suggest that he resembles Dr. Mengele.  All other search responses were negative.  [p. 444]

CASE NO. 305   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was an anonymous phone call made to the Canadian Jewish Congress.  It was alleged that this individual had bragged of being in the SS during World War II.  [p. 465]

CASE NO. 306   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by a private individual, who was passing along information received from another private individual.  The allegation made was that the subject committed crimes against the Jews in an Eastern European country.  There was no specific suggestion or evidence that the subject was ever resident in Canada; rather, there was some indication that he lives in a foreign country.  [p. 466]

CASE NO. 337   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by Mr. Sol Littman.  Mr. Littman alleged that the subject was a member of a political committee and had written a newspaper article in 1943 welcoming the formation of the Galicia Division.  Mr. Littman made no further allegations of war crimes, and when contacted by the Commission, advised that he did not think that the subject was in Canada.  [p. 484]

CASE NO. 365   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by Mr. Sol Littman, whose source of information was a certain newspaper publication.  It was alleged that this individual was a senior official in a historic-military department of the military government purportedly established in 1943 to effect the organization of the Galicia Division of the Waffen-SS.  Apart from the foregoing, there was no specific allegation or evidence that the subject had been involved in war crimes.  The Commission was advised by Mr. Littman that this individual's participation in the organization of the Galicia Division was a political act.  [p. 499]

CASE NO. 381   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by Mr. Sol Littman.  Mr. Littman made no particular allegation against the subject and provided no information concerning the subject's given name or sex, but claimed that an Eastern Bloc country had requested the subject's extradition from the governments of several Western countries.  When contacted by the Commission, Mr. Littman advised that he did not think that the subject was in Canada.  [p. 512]

CASE NO. 394   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was Mr. Simon Wiesenthal.  It was alleged that this individual was from an Eastern Bloc country and had participated in war crimes.  Only a commonly used surname was provided.  [...]  All departments reported that they had hundreds of possibilities and could do nothing without details of at least a given name.  [p. 518]

CASE NO. 409   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by correspondence addressed to the Honourable Robert Kaplan, P.C., M.P., by Mr. Simon Wiesenthal.  The correspondence contained no specific allegation or evidence that the subject had been involved in war crimes, apart from Mr. Wiesenthal's assertion that he was a member of the Galicia Division of the Waffen-SS.  In addition, the correspondence contained no evidence that the subject had entered Canada.  [...]  The Commission requested Mr. Wiesenthal to provide additional information with respect to the subject, and was advised that there was a Canadian address, obtained from the telephone book, listing an individual with a similar surname and a first initial matching that of the subject's.  Further investigation revealed that this individual was female whereas the subject under investigation was male.  [p. 530]

CASE NO. 418   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by a private individual.  No specific war crimes were alleged against the subject under investigation.  [...]  The Commission's investigators interviewed the source, who confirmed that he had no evidence that the subject had committed war crimes.  [p. 536]

CASE NO. 420   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was certain newspaper publications and correspondence.  It was alleged that this individual had been involved in a pogrom in Eastern Europe, although the allegation was later withdrawn with an apology when it proved to be unsubstantiated.  [p. 537]

CASE NO. 425   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by both the Canadian Jewish Congress and by Mr. Sol Littman.  It was alleged that this individual had been a leader of a security police and had participated in extermination operations.  There was no allegation or evidence that this individual had entered Canada.  Mr. Littman advised that this individual died in Western Europe in 1969.  [p. 540]

CASE NO. 429   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was an anonymous telephone message.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this individual.  [p. 542]

CASE NO. 431   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was Mr. Sol Littman.  Mr. Littman had forwarded a letter to the RCMP from a private individual.  It was alleged in the letter that the subject under investigation had been in charge of an unnamed camp and was believed to have shot civilians.  [...]  The Commission interviewed the individual who submitted the subject's name to Mr. Littman and was advised that this individual had subsequently determined that the subject under investigation had been a prisoner of war and further that the complaint was unfounded.  [pp. 543-544]

CASE NO. 433   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was an anonymous informant.  The only allegation made was that the subject was "a possible German involved in war crimes".  No specific allegation or evidence against the subject was provided.  The Commission reviewed material available from the RCMP and CSIS, which determined that the subject was born in 1933, and for that reason could not have been involved in the commission of war crimes between 1939 and 1945.  [p. 545]

CASE NO. 493   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the B'nai Brith, whose source of information was a private individual.  It was alleged that the subject under investigation had been a member of an extremist youth group and was a propagator of anti-Semitic hate literature.  [...]  The Commission attempted to locate the individual who submitted the subject's name to the B'nai Brith but was unable to do so.  [p. 581]

CASE NO. 526   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private individual.  It was alleged that the subject under investigation might be Dr. Josef Mengele.  [...]  The Department of External Affairs reported that it had a record in respect of the individual, but that the individual had been born in 1928 in Canada and had first applied for a passport in 1961.  [...]  Furthermore, the subject's name is not one of the aliases used from time to time by Josef Mengele.  [p. 601]

CASE NO. 555   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was correspondence from a private individual.  It was alleged that the subject under investigation had changed his name when he came to Canada from a West European country.  [...]  The Commission attempted to locate the individual who submitted the subject's name but was unable to do so as there was no one by the same name who lived at the address given on the correspondence.  The address proved to be a business, the owner of which stated that the store had existed for several years and further that he had never heard of the complainant.  Other attempts to locate the complainant were to no avail.  [pp. 619-620]

CASE NO. 561   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Canadian Jewish Congress.  It was alleged that the subject was responsible for the deaths of "hundreds of Jews."  No specific evidence of the alleged war crimes was provided.  [...]  Records of the Department of Employment and Immigration provided to the RCMP and reviewed by the Commission indicate that the subject was born in 1941 and entered Canada from a foreign country in 1981.  For that reason, it was determined that he could not have been involved in war crimes between 1939 and 1945.  [p. 623]

CASE NO. 581.1   This individual was brought to the attention of the RCMP, whose source of information was a private citizen.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes against this individual.  Rather, the allegation was that the subject stole supplies at a Displaced Persons camp after the war.  [p. 581]

CASE NO. 588   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was an anonymous phone call.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes against this individual, but it was rumoured that he had a Nazi past and a swastika tattoo.  [...]  The Commission attempted to trace the citizen who submitted the subject's name to the Canadian Jewish Congress but was unable to do so.  [p. 638]

CASE NO. 588.1   This individual was brought to the attention of the RCMP, who were investigating the suspicions of the Department of Employment and Immigration officials that the individual might be older than he claims and might be hiding a questionable past, which may have involved the Nazi Party.  [...]  It was verified therein, that the subject is indeed who he claims to be and that he was indeed born in 1929.  He was barely 10 years old at the start of the war.  This laid to rest the main premise for any suspicions of Nazi involvement or the possibility of war crime involvement.  [p. 639]

CASE NO. 599   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was a private individual in Canada.  The only allegation made was that the subject was a war criminal because he was an eccentric and suspicious person of German background.  [...]  The Department of Employment and Immigration reported that the subject entered Canada in 1929.  [...]  There is no indication the subject returned to Europe during the war years.  [p. 646]

CASE NO. 605   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private individual.  It was alleged that the subject, originally from one Eastern European country, had been a supervisor in a concentration camp in another Eastern Bloc country.  [...]  The Commission's investigators interviewed the source of this complaint who stated he had worked in a business with this individual and confirmed that the individual was a former supervisor at a concentration camp in Eastern Europe.  A check with the employer revealed that no one having the name in question had ever been employed there.  On the basis of this and other information provided by this source relating to another individual which the Commission was able to satisfy itself was not true, the Commission has serious reservations about the reliability of the source's allegations.  [p. 650]

CASE NO. 633   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna.  There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this individual.  [...]  The Commission did not request the departments of Employment and Immigration, the Secretary of State and External Affairs to conduct checks in respect of the subject, since the latter was born in Canada.  [p. 665]

CASE NO. 643.1   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by Mr. Sol Littman, whose source of information was an anonymous citizen whose complaint had been recorded by the Dokumentationszentrum in Vienna.  It was alleged that the subject was born in a certain town in Eastern Europe and that he had shot the complainant's parents.  [...]  The Commission was unable to follow up on the complainant because he is unnamed.  [pp. 670-671]

CASE NO. 644   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Canadian Jewish Congress which, in turn, received information from a private citizen.  It was alleged that this individual was suspected of being a former SS at a specified concentration camp.  Apart from the foregoing, there was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this individual.  [...]  The Commission interviewed the citizen who submitted the subject's name to the Canadian Jewish Congress.  The citizen claimed he was born in Canada and was not, therefore, in a position to identify anyone who might have been involved in war crimes.  [p. 671]

CASE NO. 648   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was anonymous.  It was alleged that this individual had been a member of the SS and has certain connections in South America.  Apart from the foregoing, there was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made against this individual.   [...]  The Commission was advised by the German Military Service Office for notifying the next of kin of members of the former German Wehrmacht (WASt) in Berlin, that it had a record of the subject which indicated his membership in the Wehrmacht (regular army).  [p. 673]

CASE NO. 658   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by Mr. Sol Littman and the Canadian Jewish Congress.  Mr. Littman indicated that he had no specific allegation or evidence that this individual had been involved in war crimes, and the source of his information was the Canadian Jewish Congress.  The Canadian Jewish Congress indicated that this individual was alleged by an unnamed source to have been a member of the Gestapo in an Eastern European country.  [...]  The Commission located the subject in Canada in 1986.  [...]  The Commission determined that [...] he was a member of the Luftwaffe.  The Commission received no information to support an allegation of war crimes against the subject.  [pp. 680-681]

CASE NO. 730   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by Mr. Sol Littman, the Canadian Jewish Congress and the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith, Canada.  It was alleged that this individual was involved in the publication of an anti-Semitic newspaper in an Eastern European country during World War II.  Moreover, the private citizens who were the source of information for the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith, Canada, reported that this individual was a Nazi who had been arrested by European liberation forces, and had been tried and imprisoned.  Apart from the foregoing, there was no evidence or allegation that this individual had been involved in war crimes.  [p. 722]

CASE NO. 733   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by B'nai Brith, whose source of information was a private individual.  There was no specific allegation of war crimes against the subject under investigation.  [...]  The Commission subsequently learned that the subject under investigation and the complainant were related by marriage and that the complainant had allegedly threatened to ruin the subject financially some years ago.  [p. 726]

CASE NO. 736   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Canadian Jewish Congress.  It was alleged that the subject under investigation had made references to his Nazi background and had made comments regarding the extermination of Jews.  [...]  The Commission attempted to locate the individual who submitted the subject's name to the Canadian Jewish Congress but was unable to do so.  [pp. 727-728]

CASE NO. 772   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by a private citizen, whose source of information was a letter initially written to the Canadian Jewish Congress.  It was alleged that this individual was a war criminal, but the letter provided no further details.  [...]  The Commission interviewed the citizen who submitted the subject's name to the Canadian Jewish Congress and determined that the subject had died in Canada in 1980.  [p. 748]

CASE NO. A-13   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was a private citizen.  It was alleged by the source that the subject of this file is a war criminal, as he seems to hate Jews.  The source was interviewed by the RCMP in 1986.  The subject is alleged to have stated that he loved Hitler.  [p. 759] 

CASE NO. A-14   This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by the RCMP, whose source of information was a private citizen.  It was alleged by the source that the subject of this file is a war criminal, as she seems to hate Jews.  The source was interviewed by the RCMP in 1986.  The subject is alleged to have stated that she loved Hitler.  [p. 760] 

CASE NO. A-35   The individual was recently brought to the attention of the Commission by the Canadian Jewish Congress which was informed by a private citizen that an unidentified Nazi war criminal is hiding in Canada.  The source was interviewed and stated that he had received information from a close friend to the effect that a Nazi war criminal (name unknown), approximately 75 years of age, had been working in Canadian locations for approximately 40 years and then went into hiding several years ago.  The subject had said other things which raised suspicions that he might be a war criminal.  [p. 772]