Globe and Mail, Canada
Jan 26 2007

Ethnic groups unite in push to deport Nazi suspects

Communities ‘feel it in their bones,’ says Jewish group leader
GLORIA GALLOWAY

OTTAWA — Four ethnic communities that have suffered persecution in
their homelands will join Jewish groups in demanding that Immigration
Minister Diane Finley deport six men accused of aiding the Nazis in
the Holocaust.

Representatives of the Armenian National Committee of Canada, the
Darfur Association of Canada, PAGE-Rwanda and the Roma Community
Centre will take part in a news conference on Tuesday to press for
the action that has been urged by Jews in this country for many
years.

"If any community can understand the moral imperative, it’s
communities that have themselves been part of the murderous aspect of
genocide," Bernie Farber, the chief executive officer of the Canadian
Jewish Congress, said yesterday.

"They feel it viscerally. They feel it in their bones. They
understand that they, by the grace of God, escaped. They came to this
country to live in freedom. And the last thing they would have
expected is that the country . . .would deem it appropriate . . . to
allow war criminals to live here."

The Canadian Jewish Congress and other groups like the Friends of
the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies have asked
successive governments to expel six men found by the courts to have
misrepresented their wartime activities to gain entry to Canada.

They are Helmut Oberlander, whose citizenship was ordered revoked for
his activities as a member of an elite killing unit; Vladimir
Katriuk, who was accused of Nazi collaboration; Wasyl Odynsky, who is
alleged to have served as a guard at two SS forced-labour camps;
Jacob Fast, who is alleged to have collaborated with the Nazis; Jura
Skomatchuk, who is alleged to have been a guard at an SS camp; and
Josef Furman, who is also alleged to have been an SS guard.

The Jewish groups had hoped that Prime Minister Stephen Harper would
announce some movement on the deportations when he attended a B’nai
Brith dinner in Toronto last year. That didn’t happen, and Ms. Finley
did not return phone calls yesterday.

But Mr. Farber said he and other members of the Jewish community
still hope something will be done.

"This gathering on Tuesday will focus that hope and make it clear
this is not just a Jewish issue, that this is an issue about
multicultural Canada," he said.

"We cannot even start to deal with the present and understand the
impact in the future in relation to war criminals being in our
country until we at least start dealing with the past."