18 Feb

The Netherlands released the names of 425,000 suspected Nazi collaborators. Why won't Canada do the same?

0 Politics History

JL;DR SUMMARY Canada faces legal pressure from B'nai Brith to release the Deschenes Report on suspected Nazi war criminals admitted post-World War II, as other countries like the Netherlands have done for transparency. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski.

At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself.
This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude.
Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from.
But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Netherlands

"That's some of the news coverage from a few weeks ago in January, when the Netherlands released a trove of historical documents, files from 1944, listing 425,000 names and records of Dutch people suspected of collaborating with the Nazis during the Second World War."

Canada

"In contrast, here in Canada, despite years of prodding by human rights groups, especially B'nai B'rith, our National Archives keeps resisting fully releasing all its historic documents on how many Nazi war criminals and collaborators got admitted to Canada after the war."

Poland

"Well, not only these members of what used to be the 14th SS Division, but others, other people, particularly from Eastern Europe after the Second World War who were granted access, who maybe shouldn't have been, the records that would have been available to RCMP security screening officers at various visa vetting offices in Europe were pretty much limited to, I guess, two main kinds of records. So German records in Germany, of which there were plenty, and then also international refugee organization records now housed in Paris, at their national archives..."

Germany

"And so they were coming up with processes and revamping some of the criteria to allow that. And this happens before, while the Canadian government is basically telling the Ukrainian Canadian organizations to go jump in a lake, stop bugging us about this, we're not letting them in. But once they opened the door or crack for non-German members of the Waffen SS from other countries, it was inevitable, whether it was right or not, I'm not commenting on, but it was inevitable that they were going to have to do the same with the 14th SS."

France

"The Canadian government was working through internally, okay, we're coming nearer and nearer to a peace treaty with what became West Germany, which eventually happened in 1951. And so we are thinking of relaxing some of the restrictions or in effect, the ban on ethnic Germans who may have served in the German armed forces or in other more odious units, let's say."

Ukraine

"I couldn't find direct evidence of the 14th SS's involvement in those labor camps or in that, in Flossenburg concentration camp, but it would not have been unusual for people who were training to possibly have done some duty in one of these places. Certainly there was evidence in the case of anti-partisan operations that some elements took part in some pretty horrible atrocities against civilians. It's, but it's a mixed bag. Part of the problem, of course, is that the division had about 14,000, I think at full strength. It goes into battle in July, 1944. It's almost wiped out, about 3,000 escape either being killed or captured by the Red Army."

Cairo Item ID	44600
Cairo Source ID	72
Retrieved	2025-02-19 05:30:45 UTC
Curated	2025-02-19 06:02:45 UTC

The Netherlands released the names of 425,000 suspected Nazi collaborators. Why won't Canada do the same?

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