Canadian Jewish groups in bid to quash white supremacist’s will

Organizations join effort to overturn will that leaves $250,000 in ancient artifacts, investments to American neo-Nazi group.

By JTA
Nazi salute neo-Nazi 370 (photo credit: REUTERS/Tim Shaffer)
Nazi salute neo-Nazi 370
(photo credit: REUTERS/Tim Shaffer)
TORONTO — Canadian Jewish organizations are joining the effort to overturn a will that leaves $250,000 in ancient artifacts and investments to an American neo-Nazi group.
B’nai Brith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, or CIJA, will attempt to convince a court in the Canadian province of New Brunswick to quash the will of Robert McCorkill, who died in 2004 and bequeathed the items to the National Alliance, a white supremacist group in the United States.
Along with the province’s attorney general, the groups will argue next month that the bequest will reinvigorate the flagging far-right group, especially at a time when neo-Nazi beliefs are on the rise in Europe. The groups were permitted to intervene at a court hearing in New Brunswick.
“There’s still an attraction to this philosophy, and to revive it is a dangerous concept,” Anita Bromberg of B’nai Brith Canada told CBC News.
Richard Marceau, general counsel for CIJA, said the National Alliance “is much weaker than it was in the past and we don’t want to take any chances of money breathing new life into it.”
McCorkill’s sister, Isabelle McCorkill, also wants the will overturned; she filed an injunction last month.
The bequest includes Greek and Roman coins that are thousands of years old, an ancient Iranian sword, Neolithic arrowheads and a stone tablet from the 13th Egyptian dynasty, according to a 55-page appraiser’s report.