MONTREAL (JTA) — The Supreme Court of Canada court declined to hear the appeal of a former Nazi who is facing deportation after gaining citizenship deceitfully six decades ago.
Helmut Oberlander, 95, of Waterloo, Ontario, has no further recourse following the court’s actions on Thursday.
Oberlander saw his Canadian citizenship revoked and returned four times since 1994, when the government first sought to strip him of his citizenship after he was found to have lied to enter Canada in 1954.
He became a citizen in 1960 without disclosing his wartime record as an interpreter for the Einsatzkommandos, mobile killing squads that targeted Jews in the former Soviet Union during World War II, from 1941 to 1943. His case rose to prominence in 1995.
Oberlander was never charged himself with killing Jews.
Canada’s Federal Court last year ruled that it was “reasonable” he be stripped of his citizenship.
“This is a very positive decision from the court,” said David Matas, legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights. “The federal government must now take the next step towards removing Oberlander from Canada immediately.”
An ethnic German born in Ukraine, Oberlander claims to have been a low-level interpreter for the Einsatzkommandos who was conscripted under duress, that he never took part in killings and he would have been shot had he tried to escape. He later was an infantryman in the German army.
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