Former Nazi death-squad member Helmut Oberlander has died in the midst of his Canadian deportation hearing.
His family says the 97-year-old died peacefully in his home “surrounded by loved ones.”
A lawyer for Oberlander recently asked the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada for an adjournment in a hearing on whether Oberlander could remain in Canada or be deported to Germany.
A Waterloo, Ont., real estate developer, Mr. Oberlander was the last of 12 Canadians who were alleged to have been involved with Second World War atrocities, but died in old age before the federal government could complete the legal proceedings to deport them. He immigrated to Canada in 1954 and became a citizen in 1960. The RCMP got its first tip about him in 1963 but deemed that there wasn’t ground for criminal charges. He was stripped of his Canadian citizenship in 2001 but he applied for a judicial review. His citizenship was revoked three more times – in 2007, 2012 and 2017 – and each time he appealed.
An ethnic German born in Ukraine, Mr. Oberlander worked as an interpreter for a subunit of the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi killing squads that followed front-line troops into the Soviet Union and killed more than a million people. He said he was conscripted into duty as a teenager on threat of death and that he never participated in any killings.
Oberlander’s lawyer, Ronald Poulton, had previously told the board that his client’s health was declining and he was not expected to survive much beyond the summer.
