Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - May 5, 1985, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press May Page 7 issues by Israel Ludwig special to the free press with the Canadian pub pics attention once again being drawn to nazi War criminals living in this a number of disturbing arguments have been expressed about Why a Blind Eye should be turned to the dangers of Witch Hunts have been fear that the passage of time has aged the Crimi nals and witnesses has been victims of nazi horror have even been lectured to forgive and canadians now face one of the most trying moral decisions in their his tory in deciding How to Deal with this the arrest and extradition of Helmut Cauca to West Germany was the first time in which canadians Learned that nazi War Crimi nals lived Here and the government was prepared to act to bring them to the creation of the Ca Nadian Branch of the Wiesenthal together with sol Litt mans revelation that the infamous is officer Mengele May have immigrated to again heightened canadians apprehension concerning this the russian embassy followed suit by releasing a list of Over 60 individuals living in Canada who have been labelled by the soviet Union As nazi War the mounting Public pressure culminated in the Federal government creat ing a commission of inquiry under Justice Jules Deschene to make recommendations to the govern ment regarding the True number of War criminals residing in Canada and what to do about almost immediately questions arose asking Why Canada was being so aggressive after so Many years of warnings were issued about the dangers of Bias centring on certain Ethan cultural before these questions can be answered the meaning of War crimes must be through politically oppressive measures the in the years leading up to the caused the arrest and subsequent deaths of thousands of the anti semitic and racial purity Legisla Tion marked the beginning of the purge of european administrative units of the is called Einset Gruppen were created with orders under Adolph Eichmann to eliminate in the most efficient Man Ner the undesirable elements in occupied As a death Camps were manned by the is which was responsible for the murder of millions of innocent women and the most hard hit were the european jews who lost Over of their As an addition Al lives were lost among Ukraine russians and while canadians were also shocked by the tales of the Indis Criminate murder of Canadian prisoners of War at the hands of the Canadian citizens who were caught trying to assist the victims of the nazis in Europe were themselves thrown into concentration As the Charlie Grant Story Illus military tribunal As a the government passed the War crimes empowering it to try by military Tribu Nal War criminals who committed atrocities against As the nazi atrocities became known and when Steps should have been taken by the Canadian government to ensure that the perpetrators of these events did not enter this the events of the cold War inter Canada joined other West Ern nations in trying to combat the red its immigration Laws became More biased to ensure that leftists were kept with Little concern regarding the fascists who were among the european refugees attempting to enter the Canadian immigration officials operating under the Antisemitic guidelines set before the As Well As new ant left found themselves keeping out the victims of the nazis while letting in their the key fact to remember when searching for War criminals is that they do not belong to any one eth no War crimes cultural the nazis and the is ran an extremely Large opera employing thousands of individuals from All in carrying out their infamous in every individuals who joined the nazi or who became members of the oppressed their fellow countrymen As part of their it would therefore be a disservice to Label these criminals with the same nationality As their More often than not when individuals came Forward seeking to join the is they forsook their National heritage in order to prove themselves when people commit the crime of murdering masses of innocent women and children they lose the right to claim they should be looked on As outcasts and treated As individuals the guilty ones now try to regain their National cloak to hide behind in order to convince others that the group is the care must be taken to reassure people this is not Case and Only the individuals Are the target of the should these criminals be tried after so Many years have passed in there is no limitation period for the crime of canadians do not want to knowingly allow people who have been guilty of the most heinous crimes in his tory to live among Cauca alone was shown at his extradition trial to have supervised the opera Tion of the Roundup and Slaughter of Over lithuanian no Canadian wants their children to run the risk of coming into Contact or being influenced by such a should the victims just forgive and forget the adage must be remembered those that forget his tory Are doomed to repeat in any How can there be forgiveness without those criminals coming Forward to confess their sins and to seek forgiveness reports filter Back of nazi refuges in South America where parties Are thrown and the old Days celebrated As if they had never How can such people be forgiven canadians must also be concerned about the lessons taught to their threat to society How can children be instructed to get involved in society when they see their adults refuse to do any thing about those who Are a threat to that society How can canadians Ever justify bringing present Day criminals to trial if they allow those crimes against humanity to go unpunished what must be done then the sought after War criminals have chosen to live in Canada and be subject to Canadian Many of the victims of these criminals now live in Canada under Canadian most War criminals in Canada can not be deported to those countries requesting their extradition be cause Canada does not recognize their criminal Justice systems and has no treaty with the requesting there a Strong argument that not Only should the criminals be sought after in Canada but tried in Canada As All interested parties have elected to abide by Canadian the Legisla Tion the War crimes act is Al ready in existence to give the government the Means to carry out the there is already a Section in the charter of rights passed expressly to allow Canada to try War suspect evidence from behind the Iron curtain would have to Bear the scrutiny of the Canadian Legal jus Tice system before it could be used to convict War in this All potential War criminals could be brought to Justice and not just a disappointing in it is Clear that All Ethan cultural groups Are embarrassed by nazi War criminals living in their As members of these groups suffered at the hands of the occupying nazis during the they want to see these criminals brought to but As individuals and not representatives of any these criminals must be pursued but not in a Way that the Brush tars groups of innocent canadians Are fortunate to have one of the finest Justice systems in the As the Means has been shown to be it makes sense to say not Only should these criminals be pursued in but they should be brought to Justice in Israel Ludwig is a Winnipeg Law by Hughes los Angeles times a report in the los an Geles times recently was headlined longtime nazi Hunter sees 85 As promising it said that there is now a search for Eastern europeans and 200 ukrainians who were Mem Bers of nazi is units in the second world the local news also was reporting the deportation Case of an accused yugoslavian War Andrija Artuko age in interest in War Crimi nals has also been intensified re reports that nazi Josef Mengele attempted to enter the country after the War and accusations made by various organizations that hundreds of War Crimi nals Are living in Canada prompted the Federal government to set up a commission of inquiry to invest Fate the several including the soviet pm have offered lists of alleged War it is 40 years now since the end of the second world and the question should be raised whether it is Wise and just to repeatedly open these old wounds of reported mis deeds from so Long obviously there Are overwhelm ing evidentiary problems in pres enting a fair Case against any of the accused after the Long but perhaps a greater though More is the question of wartime granted that there May be a fuzzy consensus on what constitutes unacceptable conduct never the the behaviour of or a at War cannot be measured by peacetime War is homicide on a massive yet we go about it appealing to the finest qualities of duty and self Sac Rifice in our youth and showering accolades on him who kills the we must be careful not to be too self righteous about those we killed compared with those killed by our Slaughter we were sickened at the Slaugh Ter of the noncombatant inno women and old men in concentration but have we judged our own con duct by the same standards that we applied to the enemy Dresden in Germany was acknowledged to be a City without military the allies decision to firebomb it was a conscious Effort to convince Germany that continuing the War would be certainly Franklin Winston Churchill and the generals who organized the raid were aware that Dresden was crowded with in less than 18 Allied bombers incinerated dres because of the influx of Refu an accurate casualty count was not but estimates run from to How Many tens of thousands of blameless women and old men were in that count the same rationale that was applied to Dresden was used to justify wiping out in one blinding then again there was no Opportunity for the innocents to of course Harry Truman and his generals knew we May justify these acts As due to the exigencies of the but it cannot be denied that they were calculated executions of Many inno cent we should ask ourselves whether the germans and the had they won the would have found some War criminals among the this is not intended As a moral judgment of the actions of our War time it is simply an illustration of what Man is driven to in the frenzy of nor is it an Effort to minimize the scale of horror inflicted by some of our former ene the very nature of War is Horri and that in itself is a Miti though not circumstance for the misdeeds on both those iniquities were part of the War maybe not a legitimate but part that where the rub if Dachau was not were Hiroshima and Dresden the Issue has Long been the allies won the our ene Mies endured terrible the responsible leaders among them Are is the purpose of this continuous prodding of an old in jury one cannot avenge the inno cents who have been at peace in their Graves for 40 nor can we deter the zealots and sociopaths of the future with Les sons of is it to see Justice perhaps but what kind of Blind Justice is it that must be satisfied 40 years later for misdeeds that grew out of a War involving unprecedented numbers of homicides perpetrated by both sides draw the line it seems reasonable to draw a line somewhere on the pursuing of past otherwise we May be in the position of condoning acts of today terrorists who kill in the name of atrocities that were com mixed even should modern Europe March on Rome for what Caesar did in 49 president Reagan exemplified the proper spirit when he said recently that be Day should be celebrated As the Day when peace instead of reawakening the passions of that our strongest Virtues have been concern for a spirit of forgiveness and Hope for the with these upbeat characteristics we Are not Good at sustain ing a hostile attitude for very and 40 years is Long it is time to wipe the slate we should not be a party to the self de vindictive spirit of run Ning Down every last accused after All these we May even take a lesson from a former in the last weeks of the War the allies sent bombers every 24 hours Over ber no matter which Side was those who lived through that terrible period could hold Only animosity toward those who rained such destruction on after the War the ruins of the ravaged City were piled into huge now those Mounds Are Trees and Flowers and Chil Dren play and the bitter memories of the bombings Are As a Man that Stu Dieth revenge keeps his own wounds which otherwise would heal and do essay of Hughes is a professor at Pasadena City College in armenians cant forget Century first genocide by Donald Miller los Angeles times recently commemorative services and demonstrations have been held in Many places in remembrance of april when several Hundred armenian intellect religious and political leaders in constantinople were imprisoned and later in the next several armenians were forcibly re moved from their ancestral lands in Eastern and million while survivors weep Over me Mories of loved ones lost in the horror of those the response of most no armenians is disinter if not outright hostility Over the one thing they associate with armenians Why does the genocide of 70 years ago figure so prominently in the consciousness of All armenians i offer two answers to this based on nearly 100 interviews with survivors that my wife and i have done As part of an Oral history time does not heal some under the pretence of re moving armenians from War zones and an invading russian the turkish government deported them to the deserts of Syria and surround ing men and teenage boys were separated from the caravans very Early in the deportation journey and were shot or the women and children continued on sometimes for along the Way they were raped and children were mothers were faced with the tragic moral Choice of giving away children to turks and kurd in the Hope that they might thereby sur More the very Young and elderly were abandoned on the Way in order that those stronger in body and spirit could tears punctuate the accounts offered by Many some of those we have interviewed Are the Only survivors from their they were children at the their pain is not just the memories of brutal acts they but the suffering of aloneness and abandon ment As should we be surprised that these elderly survivors Are still preoccupied with what happened 70 years ago the genocide ruptured armenians sense of a morally ordered in the years surrounding the newspapers were filled with stories of the plight of it was then that the famous starving gained cur Many thousands of armenians did die of having been deported from their homelands and robbed of any Money they they were reduced to eat ing grass and on occasion picking seeds out of the dung of the rupture that armenians perceive in the moral order worsens As time elapses and the Campaign of denial by the turkish government it is one thing to suffer enormous it is quite an other to be told that nothing of while the holocaust of the jews is surely As terrible an event As the first genocide of the 20th Cen at least the jews have had the catharsis of the worlds recognition of what happened to their people 40 years the armenians hear the charge that their claims Are fabrications and according to turkish even the personal accounts Given to us in our Oral history interviews Are the product of coaching by armenian terrorist the task now is to turn to the enormous archives of diplomatic and other materials that Are present in the United England and the time has come for scholars to exam Ine More intensely the historical rather than leave the accounting to Public relations compan ies hired by the Republic of tur an important change needs to occur in Public armenians Are not a fractional percentage of armenians worldwide Are associated with terrorist organi to acknowledge the genocide is not to support in quite the opposite is True Den Ying the armenian genocide will fuel further Donald Miller is director of the school of religion at the University of Southern i i ;