Canada revokes the citizenship of a 94-year-old Nazi

The Canadian citizen has been on the Wiesenthal Center's list of Nazi collaborators for a long time.

By IRIS GEORLETTE/MAARIV
Updated: OCTOBER 4, 2018 08:22
A view of the Auschwitz concentration camp (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
A view of the Auschwitz concentration camp
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
A state court approved the revocation of Canadian citizenship of Helmut Oberlander, a 94-year-old Nazi war criminal and who participated in the extermination of Jews during World War II.
The Canadian government decided a few years ago to revoke the citizenship, but Oberlander did not accept the sentence and appealed the decision three times.
"I wrote about that Nazi in 2016. He participated with his murder battalion in the destruction of the Jews of Russia and Ukraine. He always tries to say, 'I was only an interpreter in this battalion,'" Shimon Briman, a historian of Ukrainian origin said. "In fact, the Canadian court ruled against citizenship be granted to him in 1960, despite his defense that he was a young man during the war and was forced to murder Jews during the war.
The Canadian citizen has been on the Wiesenthal Center's list of Nazi collaborators for a long time. The battalion to which Oberlander belonged was responsible for the extermination of some 100,000 Jews during the war.
Oberlander was born in the German Colony in the city of Molochansk in southern Ukraine.
The city of Oberlander's birth was a pro-Nazi center during the war, and even Himmler came to visit. The local youth organized a special parade in his honor. Many interpreters at the time were involved in the murder of Jews. " Overlander has become a successful businessman and real estate agent in Canada. As noted, the Jewish community in Canada registered a small but substantial victory.
This article is translated by Yvette J. Deane.