FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 8, 2021
Ottawa, ON – Today, the Immigration and Refugee Board admissibility hearing in the case of Helmut Oberlander was postponed. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and the Canadian Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants (CJHSD) are dismayed by the delay.
In late 2018, the Federal Court of Canada upheld the Government of Canada’s revocation of Helmut Oberlander’s citizenship. The court noted that Oberlander “had previously been found to have significantly misrepresented his wartime activities when he and his wife applied to enter Canada,” and that the government had “concluded that Mr. Oberlander voluntarily made a knowing and significant contribution to the crimes and criminal purpose of this SS killing squad, and that the defence of duress was not engaged.”
In response Pinchas Gutter, Co-President of the CJHSD made the following statement:
“As Survivors, we are immensely pained that Nazi war criminals continue to evade justice by concealing their past. Mr. Oberlander served in a Nazi death squad and lied about his past to fraudulently gain his Canadian citizenship. Oberlander has cynically abused our courts to avoid prosecution in Germany. The CJHSD reiterates its call on the Government of Canada to complete the deportation process without further delay.”
CIJA CEO, Shimon Koffler Fogel, added:
“The postponement of this morning’s Immigration and Refugee Board hearing in the Helmut Oberlander case is the latest obscene abuse of the Canadian justice system, an abuse that has been continuing over 25 years in service of man who gained entry to Canada fraudulently. Oberlander was a member of a Nazi death squad responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Jewish women, men, and children. The Federal court ruled in 2018 that he contributed to the murderous aims of the unit and should never have been allowed to come here. If he evades justice again, it will be a disgrace to our justice system and slap in the face of Holocaust Survivors and their descendants.”
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) is the advocacy agent of the Jewish Federations of Canada
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Additional Information:
- Press Release: CIJA and Holocaust Survivors Applaud Supreme Court of Canada’s Rejection of Oberlander Appeal
- In 2016, CIJA helped mobilize thousands of Canadians to call on the Government of Canada to strip Oberlander of his Canadian citizenship and remove him from Canada.