To: The Hon. Diane Finley
Request to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration The Hon. Diane Finley and the Canadian Federal government to restore the Canadian citizenship of Mr. Helmut Oberlander.
On May 17, 2007 the Canadian federal government revoked Helmut Oberlander’s Canadian citizenship for the second time.
This revocation order comes in spite of a Federal Court of Appeal ruling on May 31, 2004 which restored Mr. Oberlander’s citizenship in a unanimous ruling of 3 judges, after first being revoked in 2001.
The Federal Court found that Mr. Oberlander was not involved directly or indirectly in any war crimes in WW II.
The Federal Court of Appeal found that the government did not follow its own war crimes policy of only proceeding in cases where there is ‘the existence of some evidence of individual criminality’.
In 2001 Mr. Oberlander was first stripped of his Canadian citizenship on the basis that he withheld information or “lied” when he was interviewed by Canadian Immigration officials in 1952. A federal court judge ruled that “on the balance of probabilities” he did not disclose that as a 17-year old student living in Ukraine in 1941, he was forced to work as an interpreter for German Security Forces. The government has destroyed all of the records relating to Mr. Oberlander’s immigration including this interview.
The revocation of citizenship should never be done on the opinion of politicians, but should be left to the courts based on Canadian criminal legal standards as guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
We urge the federal Government to restore Mr. Oberlander’s citizenship.
Sincerely,