The office of Information Commissioner said Friday it accepted Library and Archives Canada’s arguments that releasing the names could harm Canada’s relations with a foreign power.Ashley Fraser/Globe and Mail
A secret list of hundreds of alleged Nazi war criminals welcomed by Canada after the Second World War, drawn up 40 years ago, should remain secret, the information watchdog ruled Friday.
The list of more than 700 suspected Nazi war criminals who settled in Canada has remained unpublished since it was drawn up as part of an official inquiry in 1986.
The Globe and Mail was among three organizations to file an access to information request to release Part 2 of the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada led by retired Superior Court of Quebec judge Jules Deschênes.
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) last year refused to release the second half of the report, citing the risk of potential harm to international relations and Canadian interests.
Under Canada’s Access to Information Act, institutions can refuse to release information that, if disclosed, could be expected to harm the conduct of international affairs, defence or national security.
The office of Information Commissioner said in an e-mail to The Globe on Friday that it accepted LAC’s arguments that releasing the names could damage Canada’s relations with a foreign power.
Some groups and individuals who were consulted by the government about whether to release the secret list had argued doing so could harm Ukraine. They said that Russian propaganda in the war against Ukraine could benefit from the disclosure that Ukrainian Nazis were among those who came to Canada. They expressed fears that the information could fuel Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unfounded claim that the invasion of Ukraine amounts to a purge of Nazis.
But The Globe last year asked the information commissioner to review LAC’s refusal to disclose the list, arguing that the passage of time meant that most if not all the people on it would now be dead. As well, a draft list of the alleged war criminals had been unearthed by U.S. researchers, while several other countries, including Argentina, had recently opened their records on Nazis harboured after the Second World War, The Globe argued.
Among the estimated 5,000 Nazis said to have settled in Argentina were Adolf Eichmann, one of the Holocaust’s architects, and Josef Mengele, the notorious Auschwitz physician who fled Europe under an assumed identity.
Among the Nazi collaborators who came to Canada was Volodymyr Kubiovych, a Ukrainian who helped organize the SS Galicia division of Ukrainian volunteers opposed to Russia’s advance. He was editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine compiled at the University of Alberta, but died in France in 1985. A photograph of a parade in Lviv, Ukraine, in July, 1943, shows Mr. Kubiovych making a Nazi salute alongside Otto Wächter, a senior member of the SS who also served as governor of Galicia and Krakow.
In 2023, there was an outcry after a veteran of the Nazi-led Galicia SS division Yaroslav Hunka, received two standing ovations in the House of Commons during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
LAC had told Caroline Maynard, the Information Commissioner, that disclosing the list would result in significant injury to Canada’s relationship with a foreign government. LAC also told her it would “cause significant injury to the defence of a foreign state allied with Canada,” Maureen Brennan, an investigator in Ms. Maynard’s office, said in the e-mail.
The e-mail said the harm would extend “beyond Canada’s relations with the foreign government in question” and would adversely affect Canada’s relationships with other allied states.
“I reviewed LAC’s consultation materials and note that there was an overall consensus that, in the current political climate, disclosure of the information would give rise to serious concerns about reasonably expected harm,” Ms. Brennan said.
Dozens of leading scholars from around the world, including Sir Richard Evans, former Regius professor of history at Cambridge University and author of 18 books, including Hitler’s People, have called on Canada to declassify the report.
On Friday Canada’s Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, named after the famous Nazi hunter, reacted with dismay that the information watchdog had upheld Ottawa’s decision to keep the list secret.
“The government’s claim that revealing the truth about Nazi war criminals living in Canada could somehow be a threat to national security or international diplomacy is an insult to the intelligence of the public,” said Jaime Kirzner Roberts, senior director, policy and advocacy at the center.
“It is long past time for the facts to come out about the Nazi perpetrators of genocide and war crimes who were allowed to escape justice and live comfortable, protected lives in our country.”
A research team led by UCLA historian Jared McBride, an expert on war crimes in the Second World War, last year unearthed what he concluded was an earlier annotated version of the secret list.
The Information Commissioner’s office argued that this list had been released through an access to information request in 2019, “at a time which predates the relevant current global context.”
Among the names on this list, seen by The Globe, was Helmut Oberlander, a member of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen death squads during the Second World War. The Canadian government spent years trying to strip him of his citizenship, but he died at the age of 97 in 2021 while the matter was still before the courts.
Professor Per Rudling of Lund University in Sweden, who has researched the settlement of alleged Nazis in Canada, said he found the decision to keep the list secret “curious.” He said Ukraine had opened up its own KGB archives and the U.S. has released the bulk of its documents pertaining to alleged Nazi war criminals.
“Of all comparable Western liberal democracies, Canada stands out as being particularly restrictive on archival materials in regards to purported war criminals,” he said in an e-mail.