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The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, August IC, l989''Page'9
Opinion
Nazi hunter exmperated at fdot-dragging over war crimes
Wieseiithal has dmniied Canada
SOL LITTMAN
TORONTO-
Last month," \yhen First Choice sponsored a gala preview of Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Stoiy, the man whose life and career are the subject of the film was not there. Indeed, he had publicly refused to attend.
Not that he is disappointed in the film; he has ■ praised it as an accurate representation. No, it's Canada that angers the aging Nazi hunter, and our government's refusal to make more than token efforts at bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.
As, Wiesenthal explains it, he was prepared to visit West Germany, England and the United States because he believes they are sincere in their efforts to locate and prosecute war criminals; But he has nothing but contempt for the show put oh by Canada, and as a result has refused all invitations to visit here for the past 10 years.
He believes that Canadian authorities have deliberately ignored the information he has been funnelling to them over the years. He scorns the findings of the Commission of Inquiry iiito War Criminals in Canada, headed by former Chief Justice Jules Deschenes, aiid views with despair the efforts of the justice department's special unit on war criminals. Dc^henes ch^ to find only 20 prime cases in Canada, a figure Wiesenthal finds ridiculously low, and the war crimes unit has so far brought only two ca^ befm% the courts.
He suspects the government of stalling^ of dragging out the process so the last war crimi-nat will have died before the govenunent gets around to prosecuting him /. .
in 1966, the department of external affairs instructed Canada's ambassador to Austria, John McCordick, to stay away from Wiesenthal.
The legal beagles of both external and the justice department were of the opinion that the Canadian Criminal Code would not allow prosecution of such persons even if proof of their guilt was conclusive. The chief dianger in approaching Wiesenthal was that the old Nazi-huhter might actually expect Canada to act on the information he gave them.
A task force that year found ihat Canadian law did not allow for the prosecution of war criminals, that extradition was unlikely and the grounds for revocation of citizenship and deportation too difficuh to prove.
In 1980, as a result of former solicitor general Robert Kaplan's urging, a new inter-departmental task force was appointed under the chairmanship of justice department Martin Low.
Once mbre, the bureaucrats held firm. Nothing could be done. No treaties, no United Nations declarations were binding. Extradition \yas impossible, prosecution in Canada was impossible and deportation a lost cause.
All of these skilled legal opinions, drawn up by the government's leading lawyers, fell by the wayside when Justice I)eschenes in one fell stroke upset 45 years of bureaucratic legal thinking. In Deschenes' opinion, t^xtradition,
■ By EBERHARD NITSCHKE
:BONN;---;-
"A courageous demonstration by the German resistance to the terror regime of the Third Reich"-ihat's how Chancellor Helmut Kohl recently described the attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 — an effort to remove Hitler and, in thevyordsof Kohl, "restore human dignity and freedom to Germany,"
The same year that is celebrating the 40th birthday of the Federal Republic of Germany is also marking the 45th anniversary of a day when men and women of the most varied outlooks and political convictions piaid with their lives for their beliefs following a failed assassination attempt! Their executions, some of them taking place only weeks before the end of the Second World War, were preceded by sham trials.
This,year again, the West German public honored the conspirators in the know — there were some 200 -- who were taken into custody and executed for the message their deaths issued. In remembrance pf the event Chanceiilor Kohl declared: "The resistance against the Nazi dictatorship remains for us an enduring admonition to respect the inviolable dignity of man and to preserve peace under freedom. This obligation to the freedom arid dignity of man is indivisible and involves the entire German pw)ple. Therein lies the national duty to remember the 20th of July 1944:"
The "revolt of conscience" against the crimes of the National Soci^disf regune hatd already begun shoirtly after Hitler's usurpation of power in 1933, when political undesirables and political oppoa^ts were arrested in large numbers, disappeared in concentration camps, or were "shot while trying to escape."
Despite massive surveillance by the feared secret police (Gestapo) and a network of informers', the organization of numerous c^pbsitioh uhdergrbund groups renuuhed intact until 1944. Expectations of success in thesei circles moitnted when ^sistance groups began to organize within the military. A letter by Major General Henning vori TresckoW, later executed, to Coum_ Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, the colonel >^ was chief of staff to the comnumder of the Reservist Army and who would subseqiiendy set the time bomb that was to have killed Hitler during a strategy session on July 20,1944, but which oidy injured him, reveals the convictions at work.
Tresckow wrote:*'The attempt on Hitler^sUfe must be carried out, whatever the price. Even if it doesn't succeed* a co«P d'etat inust be attempted. The fanpprtant thing is no longer the immediate practical goal, but that the German resistance can show the world and history that
it risked its lives to strike the decisive blow. Next to that everything else is irrelevant." -
These lines reveal the spirit of the resistance and make clear that the conspirators subordinated their lives to the spirit of freedom and justice, that in the darkest hours they thought of the dawn they would never live to see. It is this attitude which all concerned shared and which allied them, regardless of their varied visions of a postwar Germany.
The inscription on the memorial to the victims of the 20th July in the courtyard of what was once the so-called Bendler Block in Berlin — the former seat of the military administration where the immediate circle bf conspirators was shot — states it aptly: "You did not bear the infamy, you gave the great eternal vigilant sign of return, sacrificing your ardent lives for liberty, justice, and hohof.-;'-
: Stallffenberg's bomb killed a fellow general, a colonel, and a stenographer, men who succumbed to their grave injuries. Only one of the two kilos ofexplosives could be detonated, and the attache case containing the bomb was too far away to have killed Hitler.
Compounding the tragedy of the failed attempt was the fact that co-conspirators in Berlin's Wehr-macht leadership sent a telex to the German military leadership in Paris wiUi the text "The Fuhrer is dead" almost at the same time as German radio stations Went on the air to announce that Hitler would soon speaic to the German people.
The official phraseology descril^ the conspirators as a "small clique of ambitious officers." Even the National Socialist leaiershipdid not fully recognize the true scope oftlie expectations and goals of the various resistance igroups in their attempt on Hitter's life on July 20, 1944 until the trials against die rebels got under way,
Political scientist Professor Peter Steinbach, writing oii the occasion of an exhibition about the miliary resistance toHitlier and" die Nazi regime, put it this way:' 'The NationaJ Socialists honored this shared ambition by persecuting and punishing all supporters of German resistance in the same fashion. They made no distinctions wiUi regard to the degree of dissidence or resistance' of nbncon-formism, or of intent to overthrow."
The National Socialist organs of ORjression now directed their efforts at die "confidence and the integrity of Uie resistance movement." The latter was characterized by the resoluteness with which many of those arrested in the wake of die 20th of July castigated the evil deeds of the German leadership and dieir minions and demanded punishment.
Stauffenberg, who was shot in the very night (^his attempt ft^wing his arrest hi Beriin, had written in a "concept paper'' whkh fell into the hands of the Gestapo that "the current regune has no right to draw the entire German people into its perdition."
aN-Press) ■
Sol Littman
deportation and trial in Canada were distuictly viable options. All that was required was a little touching up of the Criminal Code to permit Canada to prosecute those who had committed brutal crimes long ago in far-away places. . ■ ■
The government was compelled to act and the justice department was compelled to follow. And follow it did reluctantly, guardedly, determined to avoid criticism, but equally determined to go at its own pace.
As Wiesenthal points out, it's two years since the Deschenes Commission tabled its report.
So far only two cases have reached the courts. The Imre Finta case in Toronto and the Jacob Luitjens case in Vancouver, hardly an auspicious record for the ju.stice department's special war crimes unit headed by a deputy minister and
staffed by numerous lawyers, investigators and a score of clerks and administrators.
The two cases diat have so far made it to the courts have proceeded so peripatetically, sitting for several days and dien adjourning for months, that seasoned trial lawyers observing the trials are given to gnashing their teeth in frustration.
William Hobson, who heads die justice department's war crimes prosecution unit, rejects any and all criticism. Israel, he says, has tried only two war criminals in all the years suice its founding in 1948, the same number achieved in Canada in two years. To tfiose who seek to compare Canada'is record for War crimes prosecutions with that of the United States' Office of Special Investigations — 17 deportations and scores of war criminals voluntarily leaving the United States rather than face trial — Hobson insists that Canada is doing much better dian die OSI did in its final two years of operation.
Neither argument holds water. War criminals did not flee to Israel for shelter. Eichmann was not captured in Jerusalem but in Argentina. John Demjanjuk came from Ukraine, committed his crimes in Poland and spent most of his adult life in Cleveland. As for the OSI, true, it did get off to a bad start in its early years, but it has since corrected itself magnificently. Given die willingness of die OSI to share its experience with Canada's special unit diere is no need for Mr. Hobson's unit to suffer the growing pains experienced by the Americans.
Wiesenthal frequently refers to the biological clock that is ticking away. The mass murderers of Jews and other "inferior races" are already in Uieir 60s, .70s and 80s, and unless they are brought to justice soon, they will either be dead from natural causes or too infirm to stand trial. In Wiesenthal's view, this would be an insult to the dead and a betrayal of fundamental justice. Unless it is made clear to future generations, he says, that despite time and distance, diose who commit acts of genocide can never escape retribution, the world can never be sure that we will not experience similar horrors again;'
Sol Littfnan is Canadian representative of the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies.
By
DVORAWAYSMAN
JERUSALEM (WZPS) -
"It seems to me as if the entire people of Israel has been sitting for2,000 years and weeping over graves. " ■■' r
These words were written by the Hebrew novelist M. Z. Feierberg in 1939. Since then, as we know, the prophecy continued to prove true with the Holocaust in Europe claiming so many innocent victims and the ongoing wars after the establishment of the State of Israel in which so many young soldiers lost their lives.
Yet do Jew^ mourn even when it's no longer necessary? Should we still weep for the destruction of the First and Second Temples even though Jerusalem is again the capital of the State of Israel and Jews front all over the world have been free for 22 years to come and pray at the Western Wall?
The Talniud states that on 9th Av one is obliged to observe all mourning rites which apply inthe case of the deadiofanext of kin. This date commemorates many tragedies, but the main focus of Uie mourning is for die destruction of die Temple.
The First Temple was destroyed on 9di Avby Nebuchadnezzer in 586 BCE marking die beginning of Jewish exile. The Second Temple was destroyed on the same date by Titus in 70 CE.
Odier shocking calamities also occurred On 9di Av — in 135 CE die fortress of Betar fell and Bar Kochba and his men were massacred, and Jerusalem was ploughed up by the tyrant Hadrian. On the same cursed day in 1290, King Ed-Ward I signed an edict expelling Jews from England and on 9th Av in 1492, following the terrible inquisition, 300,000 Jews, led by die statesman and sage E>on Isaac Abarbanel, began to leave Spain after Ferdinand and Isabella had signed die decree for dieir expulsion.
It is expUdtly stated hi the Tabnud: "He who eats and drinks on 9th Av will not live to see the crowning of Jeriisalena, for the Scriptures state: "Rejqke ye with Jerusalem and be glad
for joy with her, ye that mourn her." This somewhat puzzling sentence means that the value of mourning lies not only in remembering, the past and'applying its lessons to the present, but also in recognizing the unity of our people, the roots of its existence and the prophetic destuiy still awaituig fulfUment with the coming of the Messiah..
Tisha b'Ay is symbolized by mourning, fasting and readings of dirges from the Book of Lamentations. The ruined city of Jerusalem is personified as "the daughter of Zion" bemoaning her fate. She weeps at night and receives no comfort. Her friends and lovers have betrayed her and she is exhorted to "let tears run down like a river day and night."
To the Kabbalists, the Jewish mystics, the 9th Av represented the nature of the world's incompleteness and the great need for the return of the Holy Presence to Jerusalem with die rebuilding of the Temple. The Midrash (Lam. Rab. 1) contains die significant statement diat "The Messiah, the Savior, was bom on the day the Temple was destroyed."
Tisha b'Av is observed in Israel, as it is the worid over, widi the fast beginning at sundown. "Echah" — die Book of Lamentations — is read in the synagogue in die evening by the dim light of candles widi die congregation sitting on the floor or on low stools, and it is again read in die morning.
It wais written by the prophet Jeremiah who witnessed the destruction of the First Temple. Then "Kinot" are read — a coUectkm of dirges by Jewish poets of differrat ages. In Jerusalem on this day, hundreds of thousands flock to the Western Wall, the last remnant of the Great Temple, where they sit on the ground and pray, often all through the night.
Many Jews believe that the birth of modem Israel negates die need to moum for die fall of Zion, whereas odiers see Tisha b'Av as a symbol for all die persecutions of our. people and our sufferings in exile. In Judaism, however, despair is always tempered by hope so that we conclude die Tisha b'Av reading widi die Words:
"Tum us unto Thee O Lord, that we may bo tumed. Renew our days as of old."